1666139 - performance issues during startup

Status: RESOLVED INACTIVE

(Core :: Performance: Responsiveness, enhancement, P2)

Description

[mspehar]

Attachment: firefox-vs-chromium-xorg.webm

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:80.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/80.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. Install following extensions on both firefox and chromium:

• ublock origin
• decentraleyes
• privacy badger
• cookie autodelete
• multi-account containers
• gnome shell extension
• Don't touch my tabs! (rel=noopener)
• know your exit
  (all except two extensions are recommended, which means they satisfy both, security and performance requirements)

2. open website e.g. https://github.com/rust-lang/rls
3. after page is fully loaded, close firefox
4. start firefox where it should restore the only tab

Actual results:

long time (~4s) between starting firefox and time cached webpage is shown on the screen. video attached for demonstration.

tested on ubuntu 20.04, xorg and wayland sessions.
if important to note, laptop is haswell based, 8gb ram, ssd.

Expected results:

page should be shown in ~1s, same as when no extensions are installed

Comment 1

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

Bugbug thinks this bug should belong to this component, but please revert this change in case of error.

Comment 2

[Emilio Cobos Álvarez [:emilio]]

If you can share a profile of the startup using perf like this it would be great. Though this should be reproducible per your comments so maybe it's not required.

Comment 3

[mspehar]

Attachment: start-only.perf

start firefox only (as seen in the video) and close with alt-f4

Comment 4

[mspehar]

Attachment: start-and-new-tab.perf

starting firefox, after the page has been loaded crate a new tab and open this bug report

Comment 5

[mspehar]

maybe two additional notes, i've changed two options:

• enabled privacy.firstparty.isolate
• enabled gfx.webrender.all

Comment 6

[Andrew Creskey [:acreskey]]

Mike, have you looked at addon impact on desktop startup?

Comment 7

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Hi acreskey, sorry for the delay.

Yes, we have done some measurement about how add-ons can impact startup. For example, we have a Talos test that benchmarks time to about:home startup paint with 5 popular add-ons from AMO installed (startup_about_home_paint_realworld_webextensions). We do know that certain add-ons (particularly ones that use blocking WebRequest) will block the first network request until they've finished initializing, which can impact perceived startup time. A number of add-ons in that list likely using blocking WebRequest.

One thing that would be helpful is a performance profile via the Gecko Profiler (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Performance/Reporting_a_Performance_Problem). If you make sure you have the profiler toolbar button enabled, you can make sure startup profiling is enabled by setting the MOZ_PROFILER_STARTUP environment variable to "1" before launching Firefox. Once it's launched and you finally see the initial tab, dump the profile via Ctrl-Shift-2, and then please Publish and share here.

I suspect we'll find that one of the WebExtensions with blocking WebRequest is taking its sweet time initializing. If we can identify which one it is, that'll help.

Comment 8

[mspehar]

https://share.firefox.dev/3e1PDHs

done

Comment 9

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

I see a big pause in the WebExtension process from HTTPS Everywhere. If you disable that add-on temporarily, does that make a difference?

Comment 10

[mspehar]

even when all extensions are disabled, it still feels laggy

https://share.firefox.dev/3jsY5AQ

Comment 11

[Firefox User]

Did things improve now?

Comment 12

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

Redirect a needinfo that is pending on an inactive user to the triage owner.
:fdoty, since the bug has recent activity, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 13

[Frank Doty [:fdoty]]

The issue remains unconfirmed and we no longer have access to the original reporter. I'm going to close this bug. If you feel this has been done in error, please reopen with additional details - or open a new bug which references this one.