1857768 - Unstable memory usage with Tab Wrangler v7.0.0

Status: VERIFIED MOVED

(Core :: Performance: General, defect)

Description

[ben]

Attachment: memory-report9.json

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/119.0

Steps to reproduce:

Simply using the browser (firefox developer edition) over about 30 minutes, had about 5 tabs open.

Actual results:

Memory usage fluctuates massively between 2-9GB until it maxes out my system memory.

I've included a memory report below, but each time I've attempted to look at the reports and processes tab during high usage, I can't track down the massive amounts of memory usage to any extensions or pages, seems to be something internal.

Processes tab: https://imgur.com/a/id0riZO

Expected results:

Memory usage should be much more stable

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

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

This bug was moved into the Performance component.

:ben, could you make sure the following information is on this bug?

• For slowness or high CPU usage, capture a profile with http://profiler.firefox.com/, upload it and share the link here.
• ✅ For memory usage issues, capture a memory dump from about:memory and attach it to this bug.
• Troubleshooting information: Go to about:support, click "Copy raw data to clipboard", paste it into a file, save it, and attach the file here.

If the requested information is already in the bug, please confirm it is recent.

Thank you.

Comment 3

[ben]

Attachment: support information

Comment 4

[ben]

Profiler: https://share.firefox.dev/46mCeEx

Comment 5

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Do you still see this issue if you disable the "Tab Wrangler" extension?

Your profile shows that as being the most active in terms of CPU cycles, and Denis sees that showing up as being responsible for at least ~4GB of memory usage in the parent process. This seems like a memory leak or other sort of bad-memory-management-behavior in that extension.

Comment 6

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

If you're still seeing this issue after disabling that extension, please attach another profile and memory report (captured with that extension disabled) and we can see what stands out. (Though you can probably downgrade instead of disabling it; see below.)

This probably wants to be filed as a bug with the extension developers rather than with Firefox. It looks like they actually have a bug on file for a memory leak in version 7.0 (you might check if that's the version you have, on about:addons):
https://github.com/tabwrangler/tabwrangler/issues/426

Given the timeline here (this bug here filed 5 days ago, shortly after https://github.com/tabwrangler/tabwrangler/issues/426 was filed), and our observations of Tab Wrangler being involved from the memory report & profile, it seems almost-certain that that's the cause, so I'm going to close this as MOVED to that github issue.

For now it looks like the workaround is to click through to install the add-on again from addons.mozilla.org -- the maintainer of the add-on has pulled the broken version, so the latest version on the addons site is now 6.10 which is apparently unaffected. If you downgrade to 6.10 you should be good, it appears.

Hopefully that addresses the problem. Please let us know, either way -- thanks!

Comment 7

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Further confirmation that this is indeed the issue -- your attached about:support info shows:

      "name": "Tab Wrangler",
      "type": "extension",
      "version": "7.0.0",

...which is indeed the known-leaky version.

Comment 8

[ben]

Hi Daniel,

Apologies - I should have taken a closer look at the memory report before assuming it was an issue with Firefox.
Looks to be all good after downgrading, thanks! I'll keep an eye on the issue mentioned above, hopefully it gets resolved soon.

Comment 9

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

No worries, thanks for the bug report and for the detailed diagnostic info that helped us identify the culprit!

Comment 10

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Looks like Tab Wrangler is re-releasing 6.x as 7.1.0 so that users who are stuck on the "bad" 7.0.0 version will get an extension-update to an older/unaffected version:
https://github.com/tabwrangler/tabwrangler/pull/427