Speed optimization

[zxelzy]

I don't understand why msf is so heavy running on my computer even to the point of crashing😶 do you guys have no solution for this?

[h00die]

@zxelzy this issue is unsolvable because you gave no actionable information. Please use the issue template, it's there to help us diagnose issues as we know nothing about your computer. For instance, here are some scenarios that could all be valid that we want to narrow it down from:

1. Is it a u2 server with 500gigs of ram 4 cpus running windows 2026 and therefore maybe it's an issue with the newest installer, ruby, or windows integration?
2. Are you running on a phone/tablet/emulator and it could be a termux issue?
3. Are you running on a raspberrypi type device with limited resources or potentially an ARM architecture?

If we knew some details it will help us narrow down the possible solutions. For instance, you can defer module loading on startup. Please use the issue template as the logs may have some valuable insight for us as well

[zxelzy]

4GB RAM and 128GB HDD is what I mean

[h00die]

You may want to try --defer-module-loads, and see if that helps. you could also run swap which may stop the crash, but will likely make the system slow.

[zxelzy]

Running swap on hdd seems like a hardware disaster🫠 and I've also tried your first suggestion --defer-module-loads, but the result is even more terrifying, the engine sounds like it's going to explode😭 I'm scared

I was thinking why MSF is like Windows, it's so heavy that even startup triggers a loud hardware noise, I didn't expect MSF to be heavier than the Debian operating system that I'm running😵‍💫

[h00die]

(AI assisted answer)

$ ps -o pid,%mem,rss,command -C ruby \
| awk 'NR==1{print;next}{$3=$3*1024; print}' \
| numfmt --to=iec --field=3 --header
    PID %MEM   RSS COMMAND
173830 0.4      223M ruby ./msfconsole

(keep in mind thats not a clean load, i have a pretty extensive msfconsole.rc)

Googling debian memory usage, the AI suggestion shows: Debian is known for being lightweight, with a minimal CLI installation of Debian 12 using approximately 260MB of RAM. Debian's requirement for 13 is 1gig with a desktop (https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/amd64/ch03s04.en.html). Therefore it seems like metasploit needs 10% less memory than Debian CLI and only uses 1/4 of the memory of Debian 13 Desktop.

Running swap on a HDD is going to slow the system down, but compared to crashing it seems like a better options. Running it on an SSD will speed that up, but you're also sacrificing some life in that hardware. Metasploit is NOT compiled code, therefore it will be more intensive to run, and on a low powered machine it will take some time to load and cause CPU strain. Metasploit, in its heavy boot/load form, is already employing caching techniques and some other optimizations. I haven't worked on any of that, nor am I familiar with it, so I can't comment any further. However I'm sure the team is open to suggestions on specific optimization techniques! In the past, I've suggested maybe not loading any modules from before XXXX year. Unfortunately, there isn't a way around your current predicament other than the previously mentioned suggestions that I know of. Your options unfortunately are:

1. get better hardware
2. start metasploit and wait (maybe it'll be better after the first successful load?)
3. use defer module loads and swap space to potentially offset some of the hardware restrictions

For comparison, my dev VM with 8 cpus and 12 gigs of memory launches metasploit (including my rc file) in 9 seconds. My system is overkill for this, but I'm typically running several dockers for targets at the same time.

[zxelzy]

I can't say anymore if my computer is too low spec, but that's the explanation that makes me know that to run industrial standards requires a god computer.

Thank you for taking the time to discuss this with me. I think I'll focus on my tool for now, and while I know it's not as powerful as MSF, it's still working fine🙂

Thank you friend🐧

[bcoles]

I was thinking why MSF is like Windows, it's so heavy that even startup triggers a loud hardware noise, I didn't expect MSF to be heavier than the Debian operating system that I'm running😵‍💫

You are running Metasploit and Debian, together.

Note that Metasploit caches module data the first time it loads. The first bootup may be slow while the module cache is built. Every subsequent startup is significantly faster.

4GB RAM and 128GB HDD

I run Metasploit, and have done for many years, in a Kali virtual machine with 2 CPU cores and 4GB RAM. It performs fine. If I wanted, I could decrease the RAM to 2GB and still wouldn't have issues.

Without the database connected, Metasploit consumes approximately 220MB RAM. My Debian 13 desktop virtual machine uses ~260MB RAM at idle.

There were some recent changes applied to the master branch which slightly improved performance and dropped memory usage by ~6%. But if you're running into memory limitations, 6% probably won't help much.

There has to be something else going on here. (maybe you left Chrome open?)

[ctkqiang]

I don't understand why msf is so heavy running on my computer even to the point of crashing😶 do you guys have no solution for this?

From my side I have run in diff OS seems no problem as you stated. Perhaps it's time to think for upgrading your computer?

[zxelzy]

It seems so, that's what I realized today.