1428247 - High memory usage on Firefox Quantum 57.0.3

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[mckay]

Attachment: memory-report.json.gz

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0
Build ID: 20171226083017

Steps to reproduce:

I'm using Firefox release 57.0.3 on Windows 10 1709 build 16299.125. I have about 30 tabs open across two windows. I believe I restarted the browser today although I usually keep it open 24/7.


Actual results:

I sat down and noticed that my RAM was nearly completely used, so I opened Windows' Task Manager and noticed that Firefox was using 21,298 MB of memory. See screenshot: https://mckay.media/7pqTG.png

I took an anonymized memory report before restarting Firefox. It's attached.

Full list of my addons, all of which are from AMO:
- Amazon SMILE!
- Basic JSON Formatter
- Imagus
- LastPass
- MetaMask
- Privacy Badger
- Reddit Enhancement Suite
- Smart HTTPS
- Steam Database
- Stylus
- Tab REloader (page auto refresh)
- Tampermonkey
- uBlock Origin


Expected results:

Ideally, Firefox shouldn't consume all my memory.

Comment 1

[Adrian Florinescu [:aflorinescu]]

Usually, even though one web-extension wouldn't cause this kind of memory leak, a combination of them + environment (antivirus, firewall) might cause something like this. Do you by chance remember installing one or several add-ons, after which you noticed this?

I can't make heads or tail from the memory report that might point us in the right direction. Maybe a memory profile(https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Performance/Memory_Profiler) would be more helpful, although I'm not sure of the size or if the amount of data gathered would not result too big to be of any use.

Mike, can you take a look at the attached memory-report? Do you think asking Mckay for a memory profile in this situation would be a good step forward?

Comment 2

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️) (PTO June 8 - 12)]

I'm afraid I'm not super proficient at reading about:memory reports just yet. Perhaps erahm can make sense of it?

Comment 3

[mckay]

I hadn't installed any new extensions recently. The most recent is the Amazon Smile extension which is just a one-liner to redirect to a different domain.

This particular instance was the second occurrence of this issue, although I don't recall it happening since. I don't use any third-party AV or firewalls, just Windows Defender/Firewall.

Comment 4

[Eric Rahm [:erahm]]

Unfortunately measuring memory usage is a bit tricky and the default values Windows shows you aren't particularly useful -- you can read some background in one of my "are we slim yet posts" [1]. What you really want to measure is the resident size (working set) of the main process and the resident unique size (private working set) of the child processes. 

That memory report indicates Firefox using ~2.6 GiB of memory which is somewhat reasonable for 30 tabs and 13 add-ons.

[1] http://www.erahm.org/2016/02/11/memory-usage-of-firefox-with-e10s-enabled/

Comment 5

[mckay]

If I'm able to reproduce it I'll get as much more detail as I can. Thanks.