179853 - memory usage builds up over time.

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[Federick Kwok]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826

Mozilla seems to use up more and more of my PCs virtual memory when it is left
opened. I open mozilla and leave two tabs permanently open for both of my web
mail accounts. As time goes on, the memory usage by mozilla graduately climbs up
from a starting 14,000 K to well over 65,000 K. Please explain why this is
happening. Everything else about the broswer kicks.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open mozilla.
2. Leave it open
3. Memory usage goes up.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

It happens for a number of reasons, including but not limited to:

1)  Bogus reporting of memory usage by Task Manager
2)  Internal caches (eg the memory cache) being filled
3)  Leaks
4)  The system's memory allocator not knowing how to release memory properly (even
    if Mozilla has released it to the allocator).

Please feel free to file bugs on instances of item #3.  Here's how to tell when
you're probably seeing a leak:

1)  Note the memory usage
2)  Load the page you are suspecting of leaking.
3)  Reload it a few times ("few" means "at least 5")
4)  See whether memory usage increased
5)  Close the window
6)  See whether memory usage dropped to where it was before step 2
7)  Repeat steps 2 -- 6 at least 10 times

If you keep seeing the memory usage increasing in step 4 and not dropping all
the way to where it was in step 2 on the 9th or 10th time around, chances are
you're seeing a leak.