FoundationModels framework, macOS Tahoe 26.4.1, MacBook Air M4.
Loading a LoRA adapter via SystemLanguageModel.Adapter(fileURL:) leaks ~100MB of APFS disk space per invocation. The space is permanently consumed at the APFS block level with no corresponding file. Calls without an adapter show zero space loss.
Running ~300 adapter calls in a benchmark loop leaked ~30GB and nearly filled a 500GB drive. The total unrecoverable phantom space is now ~239GB (461GB allocated on Data volume, 222GB visible to du).
Reproduction:
Build a CLI tool that loads a .fmadapter and runs one generation
Measure before/after with df and du:
Before: df free = 9.1 GB, du -smx /System/Volumes/Data = 227,519 MB
After: df free = 9.0 GB, du -smx /System/Volumes/Data = 227,529 MB
df delta: ~100 MB consumed
du delta: +10 MB (background system activity)
Phantom: ~90 MB -- no corresponding file anywhere on disk
Without --adapter (same code, same model): zero space change
du was run with sudo -x. Files modified during the call were checked with sudo find -mmin -10 -- only Spotlight DBs, diagnostics logs, and a 7MB InferenceProviderService vocab cache. Nothing accounts for the ~90MB loss.
fs_usage shows TGOnDeviceInferenceProviderService writing hundreds of APFS metadata blocks (RdMeta on /dev/disk3) per adapter call.
Recovery Mode diagnostics:
fsck_apfs -o -y -s: no overallocations, bitmap consistent (118.6M blocks counted = spaceman allocated)
fsck_apfs -o -y -T -s: B-tree repair found nothing
fsck_apfs -o -y -T -F -s: "error: container keybag (39003576+1): failed to get keybag data: Inappropriate file type or format. Encryption key structures are invalid."
No fsck_apfs flag combination reclaims the space. The leaked blocks are validly allocated in the APFS bitmap and referenced in the extent tree, but not associated with any file visible to du, find, stat, or lsof.
Has anyone else observed space loss when using SystemLanguageModel.Adapter? If I am missing something obvious, I would love to know.
Topic:
Machine Learning & AI
SubTopic:
Foundation Models
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