184534 - Mozilla consumes 100% CPU and 400MB memory after downloading some files

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 169777

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[Lincoln Ramsay]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130

I've been running Moz 1.2.1 for a while now and I only just noticed this so it
may be site-specific...

Basically, I saved file http://www.clock.org/~fair/opinion/identd.c to my disk
(Using "Save As...") and after the file was written, Mozilla went to 100% CPU
and ate 400MB RAM. Waiting for 10 minutes didn't resolve the problem. Also,
selecting "Save Link As..." from http://www.clock.org/~fair/opinion/identd.html
causes the problem too.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open the URL http://www.clock.org/~fair/opinion/identd.c
2. "Save As..." and save to your disk

Actual Results:  
Mozilla writes the file to disk then consumes available CPU and lots of RAM. It
completely unresponsive, requiring a forced kill.

Expected Results:  
Written the file.

Since Moz didn't "crash" I can't get any useful information from it.

This bug depresses me as it means I'll have to go back to the trusty old Moz
1.0, the last STABLE release that mozilla.org has produced. I'd love to use a
more recent version but there's been a MAJOR and ANNOYING bug in every release
since then!

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Have you installed Mozilla in an emtpy directory ?
(not over an older build )
Can you please delete mozilla/components/compreg.dat and retest and if that also
fails delete profile/xul.mfl (while mozilla is not running of course)

Comment 2

[Lincoln Ramsay]

I always install Mozilla clean. It's the only way to "uninstall" .xpi things
you've added.

I also tried saving that file from Moz 1.0.1 and (suprise) it works just fine.

I'll do *another* clean install of 1.2.1 and see if it happens on other sites.
The only .xpi I have installed is minirot13 (but that's a mailnews thing).

Comment 3

[Lincoln Ramsay]

OK so after doing a clean install of Moz 1.2.1 it works now...

Why would that be? I don't recall Mozilla crashing since I installed it last time.

Comment 4

[Lincoln Ramsay]

This bug has just returned!

I will not accept "remove this file and restart" as a solution if it must be
done on a regular basis.

Back to 1.0.1 I go... :(

Comment 5

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Can you tell me which file is the problem ?
xul.mfl ?

Comment 6

[Lincoln Ramsay]

I don't know which file it is because I "clean-installed" Moz 1.2.1 and it worked.

Comment 7

[Lincoln Ramsay]

I'll re-install Moz 1.2.1 and wait until it happens again to try and see what's
doing it...

Could it be related to Mozilla crashing? Perhaps Moz crashed and corrupted a
file? That happens quite often on Mac OS X (and it's something in the Mozilla
folder which would suggest it's the mozilla/components/compreg.dat file).

Comment 8

[Lincoln Ramsay]

Well, I finally got Mozilla to crash :)

The file causing this bug is <profile>/xul.mfl. I guess it's being corrupted?

If it makes a difference, Mozilla crashed after opening several tabs. The last
link I opened was a very large HTML page. I don't know if it was frozen before
or after I pressed "Ctrl + F" but after force quitting it (it was consuming RAM
and CPU) it was acting as I reported above.

Removing xul.mfl seems to have left me with a working Mozilla again.

Comment 9

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

Thanks !


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 169777 ***

Comment 10

[Daniel Wang]

v