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

By: links for 2010-04-08 « Bloggitation

links for 2010-04-08 « Bloggitation — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 14:35:21 +0000

[...] Improve Mac OS X performance under load by disabling spindump. (tags: mac mac-mini tuning sysadmin) [...]

By: James Reuben Knowles

James Reuben Knowles — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:48:50 +0000

George,

I’m glad this helped.

You’re on the right train of thought about the superuser. The term “superuser” is a synonym for “root”.

There’s a general rule that one should never actually log in as root unless it’s absolutely necessary, and then only the minimum amount of time that’s necessary. That’s because the normal checks against operator stupidity do not exist when running as root. Every seasoned Un*x administrator has one or more personal horror stories about that slip of the finger and… something bad.

If you are logged into an account that is an administrator for the computer, you do not need to actually log in as root. The “sudo” command runs a single command as if you were logged in as root. It’s an acronym for “Switch User then DO (run command)”.

sudo allows one to do most routine maintenance (for example, disabling spindump) without the need to log in as root.

I hope that helps.

By: George

George — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:18:56 +0000

Wow! Thanks very much, I had been having performance issues as well. I this morning noticed that it was spindump. I am a bit new to the terminal side of things. I am assuming by super user you mean logging in as root?

Thanks again, George

By: Del.icio.us-linkit 22.05.2009 – 28.05.2009 at A Heartbreaking Blog of Staggering Genius

Thu, 28 May 2009 09:02:54 +0000

[...] Improve Mac OS X performance under load by disabling spindump – [...]

By: James Reuben Knowles

James Reuben Knowles — Tue, 19 May 2009 21:48:17 +0000

Woah… mistaking breakpoints for crashes? Now that’s nasty.Thanks for sharing that information. Hopefully somebody else will benefit from your insight.

By: Tristan

Tristan — Tue, 19 May 2009 21:13:01 +0000

This is a godsend, thank you so much.

Just for the sake of Google, the reason this was slowing me down was with slowdowns in debugging Flex and AIR applications, which OSX thought were crashed while they were actually just paused by the debugger. Spindump of course then used up a chunk of CPU logging these artificial “crashes” causing audio jitter problems and slowdowns when debugging Flex apps.

Disabling spindump fixes everything, and I can’t imagine ever missing it. Thanks for the tip!

By: James Reuben Knowles

James Reuben Knowles — Sun, 17 May 2009 05:26:26 +0000

Thanks for the feedback! Glad it was helpful.

By: Alec

Alec — Fri, 15 May 2009 18:42:56 +0000

Wow, James and Rob, the nightmare is over.

My 4GB Macbook will start running faster than a G3 iBook again.

Always wondered if I needed Spindump or not.

By: Matt Bennett

Matt Bennett — Sun, 10 May 2009 20:41:34 +0000

Many thanks James & Rob – spindump messes with iTunes playback in a horrible way. I am very happy to have it disabled!

By: Robert Dyson

Robert Dyson — Wed, 06 May 2009 17:30:51 +0000

Thanks very much!