1854392 - Ghostery add-on : many tabs -> memory overrun -> crash

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Kochise]

Attachment: sessionstore.zip

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/117.0

Steps to reproduce:

(before opening Firefox 117+, copy the sessionstore.jsonlz4 into Firefox/data/profile)

Have many tabs opened (because why not).

Yet having another session in another window (currently closed).

Opening the second window (Ctrl+Shift+N).

Actual results:

Watch the memory getting overrun.

The more memory, the more overrun (64 GB gets filled just as well).

Then Firefox crash badly (may even affect computer, backup your work).

Expected results:

Open second window with its own set of tabs.

Without overrunning the memory, without crashing.

Quickly (not after a very long memory overrun).

Comment 1

[Kochise]

May be related to https://www.google.com/search?q=firefox+crash+loop

Comment 2

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

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.

Comment 3

[Kochise]

Extensions installed:

Ghostery - Privacy Ad Blocker : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ghostery/

Comment 4

[Kochise]

Steps to reproduce bug:

0- Backup everything
1- Install Firefox (portable App as well) : https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable
2- Create Firefox(Portable)/data/profile folder
3- Unzip sessionstore.jsonlz4 into Firefox(Portable)/data/profile folder
4- Open Firefox
5- Install needed certificates if behind proxy/VPN : about:preferences#privacy -> Certificates -> View Certificates... -> Authorities -> Import...
6- Install Ghostery : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ghostery/
7- Open second window : Ctrl+Shift+N
8- Watch your memory getting overrun and Firefox crash after a while

Regards.

Comment 5

[Kochise]

I narrowed down the problem to Ghostery, by adding/removing all other extensions until it crashed at every attempt.

Comment 6

[Krzysztof Jan Modras [:chrmod]]

chrmod form Ghostery here. Thank you for a report @kochise.

I've tried to inspect the sesssionstorage file you have attached but have hard time to decode it.

I'm using the following script in the Browser Toolbox:

file = "/Users/chrmod/Downloads/sessionstore.jsonlz4"
content = await IOUtils.read(file, { compression: "lz4" });
json = new TextDecoder().decode(content) 

but it crashes on me with Uncaught SyntaxError: unexpected token: identifier

How have you generate this file?

Comment 7

[Krzysztof Jan Modras [:chrmod]]

Alternatively, can provide steps to reproduce on a new Firefox profile?

Comment 8

[Kochise]

@chrmod

Steps to reproduce bug:

0- Backup everything
1- Install Firefox (portable App as well) : https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable
2- Create Firefox(Portable)/data/profile folder
3- Unzip sessionstore.jsonlz4 into Firefox(Portable)/data/profile folder
4- Open Firefox
5- Install needed certificates if behind proxy/VPN : about:preferences#privacy -> Certificates -> View Certificates... -> Authorities -> Import...
6- Install Ghostery : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ghostery/
7- Open second window : Ctrl+Shift+N
8- Watch your memory getting overrun and Firefox crash after a while

Regards.

Comment 9

[Kochise]

Attachment: capture_20230719_101358_003.png

Typical behavior when opening second windows (with Ctrl+Shift+N) : increasing memory usage until Firefox crash, releasing it in one go (best case current session survives it).

Comment 10

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

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:dao, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 11

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Ghostery sounds like it's involved, but since the parent process is crashing, I suspect there's something else going on as well, in Firefox itself.

Kochise, thank you for your steps to reproduce. If you (or anybody else in this bug) is able to reproduce this again, could you please record and post a performance profile with allocations reported?

It's best if you record this with a copy of Firefox Nightly.

How to record and post performance profiles: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/performance/reporting_a_performance_problem.html

The configuration we'd need in the profiler panel is "Custom" - we specifically need to ensure that JS and native allocations are being recorded by the profiler: https://profiler.firefox.com/docs/#/./memory-allocations?id=enable-the-feature

Comment 12

[Mike Conley (:mconley) (:⚙️)]

Closing this as RESOLVED INCOMPLETE until we hear back from the reporter for comment 11.