Memory leak again (El Capitan)

[tonyb]

I know there has been discussion already and a suggestion that the fault does not lie with the SpamSieve software.

This morning, Mail and SpamSieve having been running overnight, I was almost out of memory (about 100MB/8GB on a Macbook Pro). As soon as I disabled SpamSieve in the Mail | Rules preferences, memory shot back up to a normal level (about 4.1GB/8GB).

Seems pretty clear to me.

TonyB

[Michael Tsai]

I know there has been discussion already and a suggestion that the fault does not lie with the SpamSieve software.

Could you please link to the discussion that you’re referring to? I don’t see one here. A few people have e-mailed me about a memory leak (or perhaps just high memory use) in Mail, and I’m waiting to receive some additional information to try to track down the cause. If in fact it’s related to SpamSieve, there’s probably some other factor involved or else I would have received a lot more reports about this. (The majority of SpamSieve users have Apple Mail and El Capitan.)

This morning, Mail and SpamSieve having been running overnight, I was almost out of memory (about 100MB/8GB on a Macbook Pro). As soon as I disabled SpamSieve in the Mail | Rules preferences, memory shot back up to a normal level (about 4.1GB/8GB).

What does the 100MB/4.1GB memory number represent, and where are you reading it?

Did you quit Mail after disabling the rule? Otherwise, I wouldn’t expect disabling the rule to affect the memory use. It doesn’t cause the plug-in do anything, and it seems unlikely that it would magically cause leaked memory to be freed. If you did quit Mail, that will free all the memory it was using, regardless.

In any case, if anyone is seeing memory issues with Mail, please:

1. Try disabling all other plug-ins and see whether that helps.
2. If Mail is giving you a spinning beachball, record a few samples of Mail during that time.
3. Click this link and restart your Mac to enable some debug logging. (You can click this link to disable the extra logging.)
4. Collect an error report from Console.
5. Try launching SpamSieve manually before you launch Mail. Choose “Install Apple Mail Plug-In” from the SpamSieve menu. Does the problem still occur?

Then send the files to me via e-mail. Thanks!

[HunterHillegas]

I'm having what sounds like a similar issue. 10.11.1 and SpamSieve (latest beta from today - this below was on the last beta).

I came back to Mail using 60GB of memory, which of course was bad news bears. I filed a Radar with Apple and they want me to re-file with SpamSieve turned off.

I have no other plugins. I do have samples from when this happened though. I'll email them.

[Michael Tsai]

If you’re seeing a problem with Mail using a lot of memory, please try the SpamSieve public beta (2.9.23b3).

[Michael Tsai]

I’ve now heard from several customers who are seeing this Mail memory problem even when SpamSieve is not installed. So I think it’s caused by a bug in Mail or the OS. It seems to be related to the feature where the system automatically relaunches your apps when you restart the Mac. SpamSieve, as well as other apps, end up stuck in a partially loaded state where they are only using 8 KB of RAM and their code has not run. The SpamSieve Mail plug-in sees that SpamSieve is running and tries to talk to it, but unfortunately in some cases it never finishes loading.

I’m continuing to look into ways that SpamSieve can work around the problem. It seems to help if you click on the SpamSieve Dock icon, which makes it finish loading, or uncheck “Reopen windows when logging back in” when restarting or shutting down your Mac.

[Michael Tsai]

I’ve now heard from several customers who are seeing this Mail memory problem even when SpamSieve is not installed. So I think it’s caused by a bug in Mail or the OS. It seems to be related to the feature where the system automatically relaunches your apps when you restart the Mac. SpamSieve, as well as other apps, end up stuck in a partially loaded state where they are only using 8 KB of RAM and their code has not run. The SpamSieve Mail plug-in sees that SpamSieve is running and tries to talk to it, but unfortunately in some cases it never finishes loading.

SpamSieve 2.9.23 includes some workarounds for this problem.