Comments on: Improve Mac OS X performance under load by disabling spindump.

By: pinboard July 31, 2011 — arghh.net

pinboard July 31, 2011 — arghh.net — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 17:40:50 +0000

[...] Improve Mac OS X performance under load by disabling spindump. | James Reuben Knowles [...]

By: kirk

kirk — Mon, 30 May 2011 23:53:50 +0000

It looks like there might be another related launchd process that should be disabled:
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.spindump_symbolicator.plist

$ man spindump_symbolicator
spindump_symbolicator(8) BSD System Manager’s Manual spindump_symbolicator(8)

NAME
spindump_symbolicator — helper process for spindump(8)

By: Alys

Alys — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 02:33:19 +0000

Thank you! I have been trying to figure out why I was constantly having audio hiccups in video and sound playback on my 4yo macbook. This seems to have helped significantly. I realize my computer is a dinosaur these days, but I was sure I wasn’t the only one having this issue. Found this page via a google search. Very much appreciated!

By: Nando Gallo

Nando Gallo — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 10:37:48 +0000

Great post, my old powerbook 12″ Leopard is very grateful!

Nando

By: James Reuben Knowles

James Reuben Knowles — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 17:03:23 +0000

Thanks for letting us know, Rob.

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 10:02:47 +0000

I just had spindump hammering IO on snow leopard when safari crashed, great post.
Still relevant IMO

Rob

By: James Reuben Knowles

James Reuben Knowles — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 00:59:26 +0000

Off hand, I don’t know if spindump is still the little monster that it was under Leopard.

Normally I leave things alone unless there’s a problem because mucking with system configurations without cause tends to cause headaches. However, looking at my Activity Monitor, I see that spindump is not running. That would suggest either I disabled the little monster because it was causing trouble, or Apple changed spindump’s behaviour. I unfortunately don’t remember off the top of my head.

By: Slowhand

Slowhand — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 00:48:17 +0000

James,

Thanks…

This seems to be a relatively old thread, is it still relevant to Snow Leopard?

By: James Reuben Knowles

James Reuben Knowles — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 00:42:08 +0000

That’s a good idea. I believe that you are correct to use “load” instead of “unload”.

By: Slowhand

Slowhand — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 00:34:27 +0000

Hi,

Thanks for this tip

For the sake of completeness, could you post how to reverse the effects of ‘sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.spindump.plist’

Is it just ‘sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.spindump.plist’?

Thanks