Thunderbird hangs frequently and unpredictably with high memory on Mac
Categories
(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)
Tracking
(Not tracked)
People
(Reporter: dough, Unassigned)
Details
(Keywords: perf)
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:81.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/81.0
Steps to reproduce:
Just about anything, normal startup and use of TB
Actual results:
Thunderbird goes busy and unresponsive. Showing rotating rainbow circle. After perhaps a minute, it becomes responsive again.
Frequently happens when TB has been idle for a while and I go to used it again, but also often happens in the middle of editing a new message, or simply clicking on a mailbox icon.
Expected results:
It should never go busy and unresponsive like that. Never used to, it's a very recent problem. Makes it hardly unusable, unless I have nothing else do but wait for it so I can continue using it.
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Updated•4 years ago
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Reporter | |
Comment 1•4 years ago
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Anything I can provide to help with debugging this?
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Comment 2•4 years ago
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Please post what you see after updating to 78.4.0 in a week
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Comment 3•4 years ago
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I'm running 78.4.0 and the problem is still happening. I've given it about a week to get a better feeling for any difference, but I don't see any. Just now had an unpredictable very long hang, and it's also still hanging every time I start it up, or go back and use the running instance after not using it for awhile. I'm running MacOS 10.15.7.
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Comment 4•4 years ago
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Perhaps more than one issue. If Thunderbird is responsive during any of these periods, please capture a profile with https://github.com/thunderbird-conversations/thunderbird-conversations/wiki/Profiling-Conversation's-Performance
I have found TB to be more sensitive to memory usage on my Mac, particularly after being idle.
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Comment 5•4 years ago
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TB is unresponsive during both varieties of hang: on startup and in the middle of usage.
I have 16 G of memory, and during the problem it shows only 12 G in use.
Activity Monitor shows TB size to be 2.67 G.
I shut down TB and then restarted it and (during the startup hang) the size was only 500 M when I first looked but had grown to 1.12 G when it became responsive again.
I put the machine to sleep and when I opened it back up the TB size was still 1.12 G, but it was hung unresponsive. While unresponsive the size grew quickly to 1.6 G, then dropped back to 1.35 as it became responsive again.
And again...I put the machine to sleep and when I opened it back up the TB size was 1.4 G, but it was hung unresponsive. While unresponsive the size grew quickly to 2.2 G, then dropped back to 1.64 as it became responsive again.
And hung again...size went up to 2.31, then settled back down to 1.68.
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Comment 6•4 years ago
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Never used to, it's a very recent problem.
Doug, what version were you running prior to having the problem? Version 78? Or 68?
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Comment 7•4 years ago
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I can't say exactly what version was before I found the problem, sorry. I update promptly whenever a new version is available. Unless there was a big jump from 68 to 78, I don't see how 68 could possibly have been "the last version that didn't have the problem". I'd guess it's more likely to have been 77. If there's some way for me to test it using an older version, I'd be more than willing to try older versions. I'm just not familiar with how easy it is to revert to older versions. I guess it should be possible as long as there hasn't been any changes in how the persistent data is arranged.
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Comment 8•4 years ago
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Do the instructions at bug 1662759 comment 3 help?
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Comment 9•4 years ago
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"You could try to go into Mac "Systemeinstellungen / Sicherheit / Datenschutz" and then untick Thunderbird on "Kontakte".
I can't read German (?) so am not sure what that is suggesting.
What's the English translation of the instructions above?
The only thing I could find in the TB Preferences dialog that looked like it might be what was described elsewhere is this:
"When addressing messages, look for matching
entries in:
Local Address Books"
I disabled that and restarted TB, but it doesn't change anything, still locks up on startup.
I also then looked in prefs.js and see this:
user_pref("ldap_2.servers.osx.dirType", -1);
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Comment 10•4 years ago
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Comment 11•4 years ago
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Thanks for the translation suggestion, never used that before.
System Preferences / Security / Privacy "and then untick Thunderbird on" Contacts "
That fixed the problem for me. I've been running with that change for two days now and not had a single hang, neither at startup, nor while editing emails.
I guess there's still something wrong that causes the hang, but I'm good to go with this workaround.
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Comment 12•4 years ago
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Thanks for checking
Description
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