1308738 - eBay sell an item page uses 100% CPU and keeps using it

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Toolkit :: Performance Monitoring, defect)

Description

[meemo]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:49.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/49.0
Build ID: 20160922113459

Steps to reproduce:

Went to this page:
http://bulksell.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?SingleList&sellingMode=AddItem
The new eBay sell an item page.


Actual results:

CPU use rose to 100% and stayed there. I was using a Dell Latitude C840 with 32 bit Void Linux, nvidia graphics, nouveau driver, no plugins except adblock plus, no java / jdk / jre on my OS, no flash.
This originally happened with Firefox 48, so I updated after downloading the latest stable Firefox from the Mozilla site:
firefox-49.0.1.tar.bz2
It was the same, I then tried on my Dell CPx H500GT with 32 bit Arch Linux. That was the same too.

I recorded some details from top in Arch Linux, it gave details of the command that had the excess CPU use, on my Void top it only says "Web Content" but that also expands it's CPU use to take all available CPU just the same.
I also spoke to eBay about this problem via eBay chat, they suggested clearing the cookies and cache but it made no difference. They also suggested contacting a computer expert or using a different browser.
One place it does work though is in Windows Vista with Firefox, that showed no change in CPU use.
Dell CPx H500GT
firefox-49.0.1.tar.bz2

Sell an item page uses max CPU and keeps on using it.

http://bulksell.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?SingleList&sellingMode=AddItem

/opt/firefoxx/firefox/firefox

/opt/firefoxx/firefox/plugin-container -greomni /opt/firefoxx/firefox/omni.ja -appomni /opt/firefoxx/firefox/browser/omni.ja
-appdir /opt/firefoxx/firefox/browser 1931 true tab



Tasks: 112 total,   3 running, 109 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu0  :  92.3/7.1    99[                                                                                                   ]
GiB Mem :    0.487 total,    0.038 free,    0.287 used,    0.162 buff/cache
GiB Swap:    0.936 total,    0.898 free,    0.037 used.    0.155 avail Mem

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES %CPU %MEM     TIME+ S COMMAND
 1931 steve     20   0  871676 251620 11.9 49.3   7:10.56 S /opt/firefoxx/firefox/firefox
 2104 steve     20   0  409920 157260 81.1 30.8   6:16.00 R /opt/firefoxx/firefox/plugin-container -greomni /opt/firefoxx/fi+
 1560 root      20   0  123368  40712  3.8  8.0   4:44.77 S /usr/lib/xorg-server/Xorg :0 -nolisten tcp vt7
 1708 steve     20   0   57496  14528  0.6  2.8   0:35.07 S /usr/bin/xfce4-terminal


On eBay all selling page, an example of normal page behaviour using little CPU, once it has loaded and isn't doing anything:
Tasks: 113 total,   1 running, 112 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu0  :   8.2/3.7    12[                                                                                                   ]
GiB Mem :    0.487 total,    0.030 free,    0.303 used,    0.154 buff/cache
GiB Swap:    0.936 total,    0.892 free,    0.043 used.    0.139 avail Mem

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES %CPU %MEM     TIME+ S COMMAND
 1931 steve     20   0  872880 248972  3.6 48.8   8:45.46 S /opt/firefoxx/firefox/firefox
 2104 steve     20   0  421948 170488  4.2 33.4  10:33.55 S /opt/firefoxx/firefox/plugin-container -greomni /opt/firefoxx/fi+
 1560 root      20   0  123556  35884  4.2  7.0   5:44.27 S /usr/lib/xorg-server/Xorg :0 -nolisten tcp vt7
 1708 steve     20   0   57636  13932  0.7  2.7   0:45.15 S /usr/bin/xfce4-terminal



Expected results:

On the old CPx CPU at 100% on page opening is not unusual but it should then fall off. 100% CPU load is very abnormal on the more powerful C840 and it certainly shouldn't stay there.
I can now only list items on eBay using cgroups to limit CPU use although the page works normally with this in place. This is a new web page, they have changed from the old format which worked fine.
There is some crazy feedback loop triggered by that page in the Linux version of Firefox.

Comment 1

[meemo]

I upgraded yesterday to Firefox 50.0 and it still uses 100% CPU on eBay sell an item page, I have observed this on the Google search results page previously too, but trying today with Firefox 50.0 it isn't doing that so that's an improvement over the last version.
I also tried the eBay sell an item page using the distro provided Firefox with 64 bit Manjaro Linux on a 64 bit twin core desktop, and it used 100% CPU there too so I think this must be a quite widespread Firefox problem and not just on some hardware only. Chromium doesn't use 100% CPU so I am using that at present for eBay selling, but that has it's own problems as opening several tabs uses up all the RAM and it starts swapping, and it's generally a bit slower than Firefox I think. Google Chrome has stopped supporting 32 bit entirely so that is not helpful and the other browsers I have tried recently don't work online reliably, for me anyway.

Comment 2

[meemo]

eBay now has given the option to use the old sell an item form which works. Also this bug reporting system is rubbish as it gives away the email I was using for github which was hidden in there, and I'm getting spam now, great, punishment for trying to be helpful. So now I have to figure out how to change that or delete this bug or something.