Lion update 10.7.2 - Dock eating memory and CPU

[vandaveer]

I updated to OSX 10.7.2 yesterday. Since then, if I launch two VM at the same time, and ONLY then, the Dock will start eating CPU and memory. The memory usage will keep climbing until it takes every last available amount of memory. The system will come to a complete crawl. Killing Dock causes it to relaunch of course and then it starts all over. It does give me a temporary reprieve however until it can reach max available memory. I'm running on a MBP with 8 GB of RAM, a hybrid SSD main HD, and my VM's off of a secondary HD in the optibay. I'm wondering if anyone else is seeing this issue or has a solution?

[HendieDijkman]

I am experiencing the same. Saw some folks over at the Apple support communities also experiencing it. Looks like VMWare Fusion is involved somehow for sure.

[vandaveer]

Thanks, I didn't see anything related to this update for VMWare when I searched the Apple forums yesterday. I did see a similar issue related to an earlier version of Lion where Parallels was involved and then I noticed that it only happened when I launched a second VM.

I've done some more testing and the problem definitely only appears when I launch a second VM and goes away when I suspend either one of them.

[HendieDijkman]

Yes, and I have a feeling it may be memory related. I have 4Gb on my MacBook Pro, and I get the sneaky suspicion that 10.7.2 is using more memory than prior releases. I was hoping not to have to upgrade!

[crouton6]

Yes, I have the same issue ever since upgrading to 10.7.2.

It happens to me after using Fusion Version 4.0.2 (491587) with a VM running Windows 7 after about an hour or two.  It happens on both a MacBook Pro and an iMac.

Sadness.  😞

[00joo]

I am also having the same issue. Within an hour of starting a simple Windows 7 x64 VM - using 1 core and 2GB RAM - the processor usage and memory go through the ceiling on the Dock process. Literally using all available CPU processes and over 2-3GB of memory itself. This is not a usable or acceptable bug. I need to use Windows 7 for work and I cannot afford to spend time restarting things every 2 hours. It uses so many resources that time machine cannot back up and eventually the whole system becomes unusable - and not in the generlly thought of way but in th way I remember windows being when explorere and everything that goes with it was crashing. I have some theories and I am going to try to turn off the 3D aceleration and see if that makes a difference but I really hope this gets the attention of VMWare. I enjoy a lot of the feature the seperates Fusion from Parallels. I work in IT and need to be able to interchange and use different VM's on the fly before they go to our ESX server and/or other VMware workstation PC's. If it wasn't for that fact alone - I may very well already be downloading Parallels. I will update with how the 3D adjustment goes.

UPDATE (over an hour later): After Shutting down the VM and going into the settings - to help you that dont know (Virtual Machine>Settings>Display) and turned off the 3D Acceleration (which I don't need for my work applications) the problem seems to have stopped. The dock is now not going over 32 MB of memory used and the CPU use is stable (generally arond 0.1% or lower) !!!!

I hope VMWare fixes this soon, but for now this will be a decent workaround. Hope this helps more of you! I will repost this over at apple support.

[HendieDijkman]

Some more report back:

I saw on the Apple support forums that someone had uninstalled, and reinstalled Fusion 4.0.2 and that it seems to have worked for him. I tried it too last night, but alas, this morning when I had my regular set of apps loaded (mail, address book, ical, safari, itunes, and Fusion), Dock shot up to the top in cpu and memory usage again. Only when I free up memory again (typically by killing Fusion), does it start to behave again and the "FMOD WATCH EVENTS DROPPED!" messages in the system log goes away.

00joo said he was going to try to disable 3D accelleration; tried that too, no change!

VMware please respond!

[00joo]

Please make sure that when you do this - you shutdown windows. do not use suspend or any of the other handles - it also would help to know if you have a newer (mid 2010 or later) device - nd make sure that Auto graphics switching in ON (System Preferences(on the mac) > Energy Saver>Checkbox at the top (Automatic graphics switching).

[patrow]

Hey all.

I have the exact same problem. I will try to turn off the 3d acceleration later and see if the problem goes away.

[jcon]

I'll throw my name in as having the same problem.  It is a pain, consuming battery like crazy.  I have been experiencing it since 10.7.1 though.  I get the same console.log messages as well.

[jcon]

Turning off 3D accel. did NOT help, I'm on a late 2008 macbook pro 15" with a SSD.  The dock did stop taking CPU when I properly shutdown the windows VM.  Linux VM stayed up the whole time and didn't relate to the CPU Dock problem.  This occurs for me when running only one VM as well.  I do not have the memory symptom, my dock process has a few hundred megs of ram, not gigs.

- J

[00joo]

jcon,

A few hundred? It really should NOT be using that much; mine when this issue is resolved, only uses 32MB of RAM.

[jcon]

It does seem high, but not crazy high.  Has anyone from VMWare chimed in on the issue yet?  I'm happy to do any troubleshooting, send logs, test patches.  My VMWare is getting to be unusable, keystrokes are coming in multiple times because the Dock and VMware are consuming so much CPU.

- Jeremy

[jcon]

I opened a related support request, anyone else opening one should probably reference it: 11109649910, (that is if you can figure out how to open a case, what a pain that was...)

[gbullman]

To those experiencing this problem I was considering upgrading to Lion this weekend (already on 4.0.2).  Are you running VMs in unity, single window or full screen.  From the one explanation that I've seen on the Apple support forums it sounds like it has to do with Windows icons when running in unity mode.

I'd be very curious to find out if anyone is experiencing this in single window or full screen mode.

Thanks,

[jcon]

I always run full screen mode

[vandaveer]

I run my VM's in full screen mode.

[admin]

If you are seeing this issue can you tell me what hardware you have? is it a 2008 Macbook Pro? Is anyone seeing this issue on any machine other than a 2008 macbook pro?

Can you post your support logs with some time stamps of when these issues occur, such as

1:00 PM started 1st VM

1:30 PM started 2nd VM

2:30 PM Dock process starting to use more CPU

3:00 PM Dock using 100% CPU

send this info along with your support logs. You can get them by opening VMware Fusion then selecting Help>Collect Support Information from the menu bar at the top of the screen. The log files will be placed on your desktop.

[Arlo515]

I will do this next time it happens. FYI, the cpu spike happens for me, and I only use Fusion in normal windowed mode.

My machine is an 3.06ghz iMac running Lion 10.7.2

[Arlo515]

Update:

I had Fusion running in the background, wasn't using it all. Suddenly the dock spike hit.

I quit the app (it suspended the vm and quit prioperly), but the dock CPU was still spiked--I noticed, although the app was closed, the vmware-vmx process was still running (at a lowish 2-5%).  As soon as I quit that process, the dock went back to normal.

I gathered the report output. Please let me know what email to send it to.