1767370 - recaptcha.net background process >10GB RAM usage, not shown in Task Manager

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Core :: General, defect)

Description

[Andrew Gryaznov]

Attachment: task manager and one of the about:memory entries

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:98.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/98.0

Steps to reproduce:

Normal web browsing for a week or so, without exiting Firefox

Actual results:

Firefox memory usage grew very large, probably over 50GB, hard to measure exactly. It caused OOM on my 128GB machine so lower bound is 50GB, upper probably 100GB of RAM

I noticed that in about:memory there are several unaccounted processes that do report using huge amounts of memory: e.g. recaptcha.net background? process is using 10+GB RAM and isn't shown in "Task Manager". I don't have anything open from that site.

Expected results:

Firefox must do something about stale background processes consuming large amounts of RAM.

At least show them in Task Manager

Comment 1

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

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Performance' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Bas Schouten (:bas.schouten)]

Parking this in JS, this is not really a JS bug per sé. It looks like this is simply a website deciding to use an insane amount of memory. but it's part of the question of whether we should somehow limit the amount of memory websites can use.

Comment 3

[Nicolas B. Pierron [:nbp]]

Sounds to me that we have 2 issues in this bug:

• The lack of reporting in about:processes, which does not sounds like a JS issue.
• The memory kept alive of recaptcha objects, which should probably be investigated and reproduce.

Comment 4

[Jens Stutte [:jstutte]]

(In reply to Nicolas B. Pierron [:nbp] from comment #3)

Sounds to me that we have 2 issues in this bug:

• The lack of reporting in about:processes, which does not sounds like a JS issue.

Comment 0 compares about:memory with about:performance, not about:processes. There is a conceptual mismatch between those, as about:memory talks about real processes and about:performance talks about more abstract objects like "tabs". In default fission we have a maximum of 4 processes referring to the same site. If you open ten bugzilla tabs, you will still just see 4 processes for webIsolated=https://mozilla.org in about:memory and you will not easily know how they relate to the tabs (if not looking at about:processes - there are things missing in about:performance that are visible in about:processes).

• The memory kept alive of recaptcha objects, which should probably be investigated and reproduce.

Yeah, it would be good to see a site that embeds recaptcha where this happens. I'd recommend to check about:processes, if the recaptcha process appears there (and for which tabs).

Andrew, do you have any further hints on how to reproduce this?

Comment 5

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

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

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 6

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Andrew, just making sure you saw comment 4; looks like we need some more information to proceed here.

Comment 7

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

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

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 8

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Closing as incomplete for now; maybe/hopefully this was just a mysterious one-off that went away.

If it happens again, please reopen and see comment 4 (in particular, it'd be good to know which tab/site is affected, per Jens' note near end of comment 4). Thanks!