lsof resource use problems

When the assistant runs lsof on my file system, the lsof process consumes a horrendous amount of memory (>11GB). This forces a large amount of swapping, and brings the system to its knees until the process exits. The same thing occurs when I run lsof manually, but this is currently making the assistant unusable for me. Is this normal when running lsof on a large number of files, or is something wrong with my particular setup?

An example of resource usage from top, and some system details:

  PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
33735 username       1  23    0 28208M 11507M pfault  0   0:07  58.50% lsof

[username@hostname /mnt/media]$ uname -a
FreeBSD hostname 9.2-RELEASE-p10 FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE-p10 #0 r262572+4fb5adc: Wed Aug  6 17:07:16 PDT 2014     root@build3.ixsystems.com:/fusion/jkh/921/freenas/os-base/amd64/fusion/jkh/921/freenas/FreeBSD/src/sys/FREENAS.amd64  amd64

[username@hostname /mnt/media]$ lsof -h
lsof 4.88

[username@hostname /mnt/media]$ git annex info
repository mode: direct
trusted repositories: 0
semitrusted repositories: 1
        d03b21fc-666d-457d-b953-0ca0ac7393d8 -- [hostname_media_indirect]
untrusted repositories: 2
        00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001 -- web
        31497a4d-290e-409a-9fd2-20c7340c245b -- hostname_mnt/media [here]
transfers in progress: none
available local disk space: 780.1 gigabytes (+10 gigabytes reserved)
local annex keys: 41576
local annex size: 943.95 gigabytes (+ 49 unknown size)
annexed files in working tree: 41887
size of annexed files in working tree: 945.14 gigabytes (+ 50 unknown size)
bloom filter size: 16 mebibytes (8.3% full)
backend usage:
        SHA512E: 81518
        WORM: 1846
        URL: 99

[username@hostname /mnt/media]$ git annex version
git-annex version: 5.20140817
build flags: Assistant Webapp Webapp-secure Pairing S3 WebDAV Kqueue XMPP DNS Feeds Quvi TDFA CryptoHash
key/value backends: SHA256E SHA1E SHA512E SHA224E SHA384E SKEIN256E SKEIN512E SHA256 SHA1 SHA512 SHA224 SHA384 SKEIN256 SKEIN512 WORM URL
remote types: git gcrypt S3 bup directory rsync web webdav tahoe glacier ddar hook external
local repository version: 5
supported repository version: 5
upgrade supported from repository versions: 0 1 2 4

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comment 1

That seems very wrong.. On my linux system here, I can lsof / and it uses 4 kb total, and runs in 0.09 seconds, to report on 3500 open files.

But, I don't know about freebsd. lsof may be more expensive there for some reason, like needing to look in kernel memory rather than in /proc perhaps? But expensive to the tune of gigabytes of space used, that must be lsof misbehaving.