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ManagedClient process consumes so much memory it causes a kernel panic

Starting about a month ago, the macOS Dropbox app has started consuming an abnormal amount of memory by way of the ManagedClient process. It'll climb to over 10GB of memory (not disk space) and eventually cause the machine to restart itself.

Has anyone else faced this issue? I've verified permissions, uninstalled and reinstalled, enabled and disabled Smart Sync... nothing helps.

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Walter

Hey there @maritimeseven - sorry to hear about this.

Since you are experiencing high CPU usage from our desktop app, you may want to review the following article first which covers common causes of high CPU usage and the steps to resolve these: https://www.dropbox.com/help/desktop-web/high-cpu-usage

If you are unable to resolve your issue with this information, please let me know (a screenshot would also help our investigation in that case) and we'll take it from there.

Thank you.

maritimeseven

Thanks for the reply!

I've tried those steps (including checking for symlinks) and I'm still faced with this issue. In the screenshot below, you'll see the ManagedClient process running. It's up to 4.05 GB in that image and is already up to 4.64 GB as of typing this reply.

The process will disappear if I quit the Dropbox app.

Activity Monitor_JM.png

Walter

Thanks for the swift response and screenshot @maritimeseven - most obliged!

From what I can tell this issue is not related to Dropbox whatsoever as this process (i.e. the "ManagedClient" one) is not coming from us.

Just to make sure and isolate this issue, could you please try quitting the Dropbox application by using the following steps?

Click the Dropbox icon in your menu bar
Click on the gear icon :gear: in the Notifications panel and select "Quit Dropbox"

Should the problem persist when Dropbox is completely closed, this suggests that the cause is related to something outside of the Dropbox application. You may want to check other applications or components of your Operating System that could be causing this.

In any case, please keep me posted on your findings. Thanks!

maritimeseven

Excellent. I did quit the Dropbox app which keeping Activity Monitor open. About 5 seconds after quitting the Dropbox app, the ManagedClient process disappeared completely from Activity Monitor.

Walter

Funny thing what you mention @maritimeseven - would it be OK if I reached out to you via email to the address you use for your profile here so we can look into this together with all of my tools available?

maritimeseven

Yes absolutely. Reach out anytime. Thanks!

Walter

Roger that @maritimeseven!

I just sent you an email so we can have a further look into this.

Check your inbox for my message and we will take it from there.

Thanks for your patience and cooperation so far.

Cheers!

emclain

I just had a very similar experience... ManagedClient was using 8 GB of memory. I quit Dropbox and ManagedClient disappeared. Thanks @maritimeseven !

Dom4

I'm experiencing the same issue - quitting dropbox removes the ManagedClient process, but as soon as Dropbox restarts the process starts up again and the RAM starts growing at a rapid pace (between 30 and 300 MB every 5-10 seconds).

Every few minutes it grows over 11 GB of RAM and throws up an OS 'out of application memory' warning and eventually kills and restarts the process.

It is very disruptive!

Walter

Hey guys (@emclain & @Dom4), sorry to hear you're facing this issue on your Mac devices.

Can you please let me know if you've gone through the article I've mentioned in a previous comment? (https://help.dropbox.com/desktop-web/high-cpu-usage)

Could you also try re-installing our software using the offline installer for our latest stable version as found below and let me know if you're still seeing this behavior?

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Desktop-client-builds/Stable-Build-69-4-102/m-p/335356#M5235

Keep me posted fellas!

Dom4

Hi Walter,

Thanks for responding.

I've followed both sets of instructions - but no change in behavior.

I've also more aggressively utilized selective sync to reduce the volume of files on my machine. It is currently under 250,000 files (it was above to 280,000 before). I've been monitoring the process activity throughout the day and it hasn't made any material difference to the rate at which RAM increases.

Thanks,

Dom

Walter

Thanks for the additional information Dom - much appreciated!

We've passed your comments to your existing ticket so we can have all the relevant information under the same place. I can also see that a member of our team has responded with some additional troubleshooting steps for you.

Spoiler

If you're not seeing their email, I'd suggest checking with your Team's admin for further details.

I still don't believe this is coming from us but let's see what our experts have to say first!

In any case, please keep me posted on your progress.

Tim P.9

Have there been any follow ups or anyone else experiencing this?

I found this thread after seeing unusual memory usage by ManagedClient, and also found that it cleared up after quitting dropbox.

Running v 85.4.1.55, I reviewed the link shared about high memory and CPU and it doesn't seem anything pertains to my environment. I just tried uninstalling and reinstalling, and will see if the issue comes up again.

I saved a sample of the ManagedClient process before this was done, and backed up the dropbox debug log, which just showed some expected DNS errors the previous day but nothing else useful. Let me know if you would like anything, and I'll follow up if the issue exists again.

Tim P.9

I noticed that a new ManagedClient thread was running after starting the reinstalled version, and it was consuming about a 100KB every couple of seconds.

I also noticed that a lot of the files on my sync'ed folder locally were not showing up correctly. text files couldn't be cat'ed out on the command line or opened in a text editor even though the size of the files show correctly on my mac, and the files on the cloud are correct.

Only a couple of recent files that I've put into Dropbox from that client are valid. all older files are corrupted.

I'm going to leave the local environment in this state and interact with the cloud as I need files for a little bit and see if you guys want any more info.

Walter

Thanks for the report @Tim P.9.

As you've done some troubleshooting already - great job by the way - I'll have to ask you to try to repro this issue on a brand new OS profile on your Mac device to see if this is somehow related to your user profile.

To do this, please create a brand new local Operating System user profile with administrator rights in which we'll try to reproduce the behavior, by following these steps:

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH18891

Once the new user profile is created, please log in to this new user profile and install the latest version of Dropbox from here:

https://www.dropbox.com/downloading?build=85.4.155&plat=mac&type=full

Enter your username and password when prompted.

During the installation process you can use Selective Sync preferences to download only some of the folders that your account has in order to test how the application behaves in this newly created profile.

If you were not able to run the Dropbox desktop application correctly without ManagedClient in the newly created profile, please let me know Tim!

Oh, and welcome to our Community :penguin: