Mac Osx Private Var Vm Sleepimage
Mac OS: Reclaim disk space
So, I've been having issues with my MacPro. It has a new SSD hard drive but from time to time, it will start swapping and claim there is no more disk space left on the computer.
df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2 223Gi 203Gi 20Gi 92% /
devfs 185Ki 185Ki 0Bi 100% /dev
map -hosts 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% /net
map auto_home 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% /home
I started looking for large files:
sudo find / -type f -size +100000k -exec ls -lh {} \; | awk '{ print $9 ": " $5 }'
The output was similar to:
...
/private/var/vm/sleepimage: 16G
/private/var/vm/swapfile10: 1.0G
/private/var/vm/swapfile11: 1.0G
/private/var/vm/swapfile12: 1.0G
/private/var/vm/swapfile13: 1.0G
/private/var/vm/swapfile14: 1.0G
/private/var/vm/swapfile15: 1.0G
/private/var/vm/swapfile16: 1.0G
/private/var/vm/swapfile2: 128M
/private/var/vm/swapfile3: 256M
/private/var/vm/swapfile4: 512M
/private/var/vm/swapfile5: 1.0G
/private/var/vm/swapfile6: 1.0G
/private/var/vm/swapfile7: 1.0G
/private/var/vm/swapfile8: 1.0G
/private/var/vm/swapfile9: 1.0G
...
That's a lot of diskspace right there. Apparently /private/var/vm/sleepimage is used to store RAM contents during hibernation. So, if you have 16G of RAM, then /private/var/vm/sleepimage will take 16G of ram.
The other files seem like cruft left over.
You can delete those files. If hibernate is enabled it will be recreated next time the Mac goes to sleep.
You can disable hibernation in terminal:
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
And then remove all swapfiles and sleepimage:
sudo rm /private/var/vm/sleepimage
sudo rm /private/var/vm/swapfile*
Apparently, in Mountain Lion the image might come back, so we could create sleepimage and claim it so that the system can touch it or recreate it:
sudo touch /private/var/vm/sleepimage
chflags schg /private/var/vm/sleepimage
From man pmset:
hibernatemode = 0 (binary 0000) by default on supported desktops. The system will not back memory up to persistent storage. The system must wake from the contents of memory; the system will lose context on power loss. This is, historically, plain old sleep.
hibernatemode = 3 (binary 0011) by default on supported portables. The system will store a copy of memory to persistent storage (the disk), and will power memory during sleep. The system will wake from memory, unless a power loss forces it to restore from disk image.
hibernatemode = 25 (binary 0001 1001) is only settable via pmset. The system will store a copy of memory to persistent storage (the disk), and will remove power to memory. The system will restore from disk image. If you want "hibernation" - slower sleeps, slower wakes, and better battery life, you should use this setting.