1554547 - Do not unload WebRTC tabs in low memory situations

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1682442

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect, P3)

Description

[Asif Youssuff]

Per https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/bt68gj/got_another_strange_problem_to_reportand_ask/

User reports that they were on an active Discord call when the tab was unloaded.

I think that users do not expect that active calls should be discarded, even in low memory situations.

Comment 1

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

The user claims they had been talking, so in theory this should be covered by tabs with sound playing getting discarded last... unless there were no other tabs to discard?

Comment 2

[Gabriele Svelto [:gsvelto] (PTO)]

If there's a way to detect an active WebRTC session in a tab we can de-prioritize it so that it's less likely to be unloaded. The original use-case for the tabs playing audio assumed "passive" interaction with the tab, e.g. listening to music or something along the lines. An interruption in that case was deemed better than the tab - or Firefox - crashing due to the lack of memory.

Comment 3

[Robert AB]

Probably, it is better for user to increase the size of swap file in this case. Naturally, it is better to have more RAM but increasing swap file is less problematic.

Also Firefox might give this suggestion to the user about the need to increase the size of swap file or getting more RAM (plus link to Mozilla website showing how to increase the swap file size).

Comment 4

[Gabriele Svelto [:gsvelto] (PTO)]

I've identified a flaw in how we measure low-memory scenarios which might be causing this in bug 1558554.

Comment 5

[Toshihito Kikuchi [:toshi]]

A WebRTC tab was de-prioritized by the patch of bug 1682442.