239414 - Firefox eats 100% CPU using Adobe PDF plugin (nppdf.so)

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 198954

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[[e-mail]]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040331 Firefox/0.8
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040331 Firefox/0.8

When viewing any PDF document using the nnpdf.so plugin Firefox uses 100% of the
CPU.  Subsidiary symptoms are that the X server (Xfree86 4.3) also competes for
CPU and a flicker is observed in text display in the URL bar.


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install the Adobe nppdf.so plugin
2. View any URL which is a PDF file.
3. Monitor CPU usage using "top" or other tool.

Actual Results:  
Plugin loads and displays PDF URL apparently correctly
100% CPU usage reported forever.


Expected Results:  
CPU usage should go to low value after rendering completed.

This occurs using Mandrake 9.1 and Mandrake 10.0 (Cooker) distributions and
Firebird 0.7 and Firefox 0.8 and the plugin from acroread 5.08.  It does NOT
happen with any version of Mozilla up to and including 1.6 on the identical
O/S and with the identical plugin.

This occurs with the GTK2-XFT build of Firefox and also one I compiled myself
from the SRPM source RPM package from Mandrake Cooker.  No dependency problems
were encountered.

Comment 1

[hans horwath]

hello,

i hope, that i can give in here any further experiences with this bug!

it's the same with win xp. when i just let it go, it lasts very long, that adobe
reader can load its parts (and is very, very slow). finally, when this is
finished, there is no pdf-file to see. i have to shutdown and restart firefox,
then pdf is working normal. after restarting my pc, the story starts from the
beginning.
my solution now: i open windows-taskmanager, rightclick on firefox.exe and click
the priority to very low - right after firefox starts to load adobe-reader. this
helps and everything is going on as it should be. after loading the pdf i reset
the process-priority to normal.

greetings
hans horwath (zuhans_at_iname.com)

Comment 2

[shadytrees]

This is Adobe Reader's fault as it loads a bazillion plugins whenever it is
invoked, hence the creation of programs like Adobe Reader Startup. Not to
mention the Adobe Reader itself is slow on startup. As proof, Adobe Reader also
hangs Internet Explorer for a while whenever I try to open a PDF file in it. ->
Invalid?

Comment 3

[Felix E. Klee]

(In reply to comment #2)
> This is Adobe Reader's fault as it loads a bazillion plugins whenever it is
> invoked, hence the creation of programs like Adobe Reader Startup. Not to
> mention the Adobe Reader itself is slow on startup. As proof, Adobe Reader also
> hangs Internet Explorer for a while whenever I try to open a PDF file in it. ->
> Invalid?

On LINUX it's different:
1. Firefox with nppdf uses almost 100% CPU time, even after everything is loaded.
2. The problem does *not* occur with Netscape 4.8 (haven't tried it in other
browsers).
I conclude that we have a Firefox bug here.

Felix

Comment 4

[shadytrees]

Of course it's different on Linux; Adobe has yet to provide Adobe Reader 6.0 for
Linux yet and Adobe Reader 6.0 is when Adobe began implementing their plugins
system. If you use Adobe 5.x on Windows, you'll find it's remarkably faster too.

Comment 5

[Ryuichi KUBUKI]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Of course it's different on Linux; Adobe has yet to provide Adobe Reader 6.0 for
> Linux yet and Adobe Reader 6.0 is when Adobe began implementing their plugins
> system. If you use Adobe 5.x on Windows, you'll find it's remarkably faster too.

I had this on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7)
Gecko/20040809 Firefox/0.9.1+, with Adobe Acrobat Professional 6.0.
I turned off all checkboxes in its option to kill unnecessary plugins, but still
it takes nearly 10 seconds of 99% CPU usage and it's pretty unusual. Can someone
change OS to all?

Comment 6

[Ryuichi KUBUKI]

(In reply to comment #2)
> This is Adobe Reader's fault as it loads a bazillion plugins whenever it is
> invoked, hence the creation of programs like Adobe Reader Startup. Not to
> mention the Adobe Reader itself is slow on startup. As proof, Adobe Reader also
> hangs Internet Explorer for a while whenever I try to open a PDF file in it. ->
> Invalid?

Surely IE takes 99% CPU too but it looks like shorter than FF. Acrobat takes CPU
time at its 1st run as plugin and subsequent loading of other pdf has no
problem. IMO rather than marking this invalid, can't FF mitigate influence of a
malfunctioning plugin by separating threads or something like that?

Comment 7

[Dominik Stadler]

This sounds like a duplicate of Bug 198954.

Comment 8

[Felix E. Klee]

(In reply to comment #7)
> This sounds like a duplicate of Bug 198954.

ACK, this indeed seems to be sort of a duplicate (note that 198954 actually 
refers to plain Mozilla, not Firefox, but the reason for the BUG is probably the 
same).

Comment 9

[Felix Rommel]

The same problem with 100% CPU usage under Linux (here SUSE LINUX 9.1) while
viewing a PDF document with the nnpdf.so plugin occurs also in the newest
version 1.0RC of Firefox.

Please solve this bug because otherwise people cannot show PDF documents in
Firefox without having their CPU running with full power!

That's especially annoying for notebook users like me where the fan does not
stop any more while reading the document.

Comment 10

[shadytrees]

Somebody duplicate this against bug 198954 (this bug applies to Mozilla and
Firefox equally, so I guess it can be validly duplicated to it) unless the
reporter can reproduce this on a GTK1 build.

"I turned off all checkboxes in its option to kill unnecessary plugins, but still
it takes nearly 10 seconds of 99% CPU usage and it's pretty unusual."
Try Adobe Reader Speedup.
http://www.tnk-bootblock.co.uk/prods/misc/index.php

Comment 11

[Clemens Bergmann]

This bug seems to be solved in Mozilla 1.8a4! Using the same plugin from
acroreader 5.0.9, Mozilla 1.8a4 does not use 100% CPU as Thunderbird and Mozilla
1.7.x do.

Clemens Bergmann

Comment 12

[Rani]

(In reply to comment #11)
> This bug seems to be solved in Mozilla 1.8a4! Using the same plugin from
> acroreader 5.0.9, Mozilla 1.8a4 does not use 100% CPU as Thunderbird and Mozilla
> 1.7.x do.
> 
> Clemens Bergmann
Mozilla 1.8a4 is what version of Firefox? Is the changes there are already
included in FireFox 1.0PR (sorry for my ignorance about the relationship between
those projects)? In Firefox 1.0PR on Fedora Core 1, this bug still happens.

Comment 13

[Ryuichi KUBUKI]

(In reply to comment #12)
> Is the changes there are already
> included in FireFox 1.0PR (sorry for my ignorance about the relationship between
> those projects)

I think it's not - don't you see something like rv:1.7.3 in your version string
in the about dialog?

Comment 14

[Mark Landreville]

The bug does not appear in Mozilla 1.7.3.  It is still a problem in Firefox
1.0RC however.

> > This bug seems to be solved in Mozilla 1.8a4! Using the same plugin from
> > acroreader 5.0.9, Mozilla 1.8a4 does not use 100% CPU as Thunderbird and Mozilla
> > 1.7.x do.
> > 
> > Clemens Bergmann
> Mozilla 1.8a4 is what version of Firefox? Is the changes there are already
> included in FireFox 1.0PR (sorry for my ignorance about the relationship between
> those projects)? In Firefox 1.0PR on Fedora Core 1, this bug still happens.
> 

Comment 15

[niall]

I am seeing this with Firefox 1.0 final, XP SP2 and Adobe Acrobat 6.0.0

Firefox.exe takes up 100% when I close all PDF windows.

Comment 16

[hans horwath]

finally i solved this problem (it occurred even with firefox 1.0 and windows xp,
sp2) by changing windows-optimization from "background tasks" to "programs".

when windows optimizes for background-tasks then firefox needs all of cpu-power
during the loading of the adobe-reader. changed to optimize for programs
everything is going ok!

hope this helps
greetings from autria/europe
hans
p.s.: i don't know if this can be helpful for linux too.

Comment 17

[Arthur Magill]

(In reply to comment #15)
> I am seeing this with Firefox 1.0 final, XP SP2 and Adobe Acrobat 6.0.0
> 
> Firefox.exe takes up 100% when I close all PDF windows.

Copy that. Linux kernel 2.6.7 (Gentoo), Acroread 5.09, Firefox 1.0 final. 100%
cpu when I try opening pdf's via nppdf.so pluggin. 

Comment 18

[Larry Ross]

(In reply to comment #15)
> I am seeing this with Firefox 1.0 final, XP SP2 and Adobe Acrobat 6.0.0
> 
> Firefox.exe takes up 100% when I close all PDF windows.

This is the behaviour I am getting.  Firefox.exe goes to 100% for somewhere
between 10 and 30 seconds (varies) and is completely unresponsive during this time.

Firefox 1.0
Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Professional (6.0.0 05/19/2003)
Windows 2000 (5.00.2195 / Service Pack 4)

Does not happen if I have adobe running already (as I assume it is not shutting
down the plug-in).  Watching the task manager, Acrobat.exe remains running for
the duration of the "freeze".

Comment 19

[Patrick]

Original report is about a permanent (not just at start-up for 30 seconds) high
CPU usage on Linux.

Since I installed acroread-5.010-4.2 (SUSE) on my PC, I haven't seen the issue
anymore. This is confirmed in bug 198954 comment 60.

Therefore, duplicating. Please undo if I am incorrect.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 198954 ***