Why does Firefox swap so much?
Categories
(Core :: Performance: General, defect)
Tracking
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People
(Reporter: oluoluolu+ffbugzilla, Unassigned)
Details
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:98.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/98.0
Steps to reproduce:
Usually I have a lot of tabs open (let's say at least 100).
I have "learned" and installed Auto Tab Discard (I don't know how it actually works though).
Most of my tabs wind up discarded.
Like yesterday I had between 100 and 200 tabs open, but I started FF in offline mode, and it started swapping for about a half hour.
Actual results:
Excessive swapping on a regular basis and excessive memory use sometimes (like all system memory (recently it has been using all my swap space too, so I'm guessing a leak somewhere).
Expected results:
I would just like it to stop swapping so much.
I would also appreciate some pointers on how to investigate why it is swapping.
I know this not n excellent bug report - feel free to follow up.
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Comment 1•3 years ago
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The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Tabbed Browser' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.
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Comment 2•3 years ago
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The severity field is not set for this bug.
:dao, could you have a look please?
For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.
This is a usability/user experience issue, not a tabbed browser issue (I don't know how to change it.)
This has been happening in some form since Firefox 70's (the swapping - though that system had VERY little working memory).
I'm actually going to buy a new system very soon, but still, I believe some mitigation needs to take place to relieve this.
For example, on mobile/Fenix (or Fennec?), tabs are completely unloaded after a certain amount of time. Personally, I think some sort of serialization to disk of old tabs would be ok, though I don't ever expect to see this feature, honestly.
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Updated•3 years ago
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I haven't synced my profile yet, so I don't know if everything is going to work.
But in the forums a commenter said that there are memory fragmentation issues in Firefox.
Personally, I think it's runaway Javascript, but I have no evidence.
I would like to know if there's any way to check something like this.
But, for some reason, Firefox swapped for like 18 hours on my old system last night. Strange.
--safe-mode loads quickly, but I need Tab Stash to save my tabs, and the temporary install of an extension option did not work for me.
What to do?
FWIW I have no problem building from source.
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Comment 5•3 years ago
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I think we would need to get a profile with the issue happening to get a better idea. You can follow the instructions here: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/performance/reporting_a_performance_problem.html and gather a profile with the issue. You can upload the profile with the "upload profile" button on the top right corner.
Thanks!
Thank you responding and sorry that I am just getting back.
Unfortunately that system has been "decommissioned" -- it has been backed up, but I don't know if I will be revisiting that anytime soon.
I will keep your advice in mind, and will be reviewing the linked documentation after I post this.
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Comment 7•3 years ago
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Please re-open if appropriate.
Description
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