1450993 - [meta] Make low-memory detection work properly on Windows

Status: NEW

(Core :: Memory Allocator, enhancement)

Description

[Gabriele Svelto [:gsvelto]]

The AvailableMemoryTracker [1] is supposed to detect low-memory situations on Windows and send memory pressure events to let Firefox recover from them instead of crashing. In practice it almost never triggers, and when it does it can do more harm than good. Since it has multiple flaws I'll file specific bugs for each one and tie them to this bug for tracking.

This is rather urgent since we had a significant spike in OOM crash rate starting with Firefox 58 (see a comparison of OOM|Small crashes between 57.0.4 and 58.0.2 in [2]).

[1] https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/f5fb323246bf22a3a3b4185882a1c5d8a2c02996/xpcom/base/AvailableMemoryTracker.cpp
[2] https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/signature/?product=Firefox&platform=Windows&version=57.0.4&version=58.0.2&signature=OOM%20%7C%20small&date=%3E%3D2017-09-29T06%3A01%3A00.000Z&date=%3C2018-04-04T06%3A01%3A23.000Z#graphs

Comment 1

[Gabriele Svelto [:gsvelto]]

This should probable be [MemShrink:meta] but let's wait for the next triage first.

Comment 2

[Neha Kochar [:neha]]

gcp said Toshihito will work on the low memory detection for Windows so leaving a NI here.

Comment 3

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The bug assignee is inactive on Bugzilla, so the assignee is being reset.

Comment 4

[Suhaib Mujahid [:suhaib]]

Sorry, there was a problem with the detection of inactive users. I'm reverting the change.

Comment 5

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The bug assignee is inactive on Bugzilla, so the assignee is being reset.