Closed Bug 259713 Opened 21 years ago Closed 18 years ago

Mozilla Firefox in Linux is using a crazy lot of memory

Categories

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
General
Platform:
x86
Linux
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
major

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: jiang_wq, Unassigned)

Details

Attachments

(3 files)

sceen shot of the Linux system monitor
208.08 KB, image/png
Details
screen shot of 'top' command
198.48 KB, image/png
Details
Zipped up screen shot of Taskmanger
205.74 KB, image/jpeg
Details
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.3 Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.3 My firefox on Fedora Core 2 (updated to the most recent patches) is using about 160 MB of memory, with only 4 tabs. The 4 tabs do not have any fancy content - they're normal google search results, online dictionary, and this bug report page, etc. I tried several times, restart/closedown the browser, but it seems the general memory consumtion is that high. I used Linux System Monitor to get the data (example: firefox using 159 MB, X server for it is using 9 MB, etc). I searched the bugs but was quite surprised that nobody seems reported this problem. On my Windows firefox (also 0.9.3) it is using about 30 or 40 MB, way lower than that of Linux. Can the Linux System Monitor be trusted? Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Open Firefox 2.open several web pages in several tabs 3.watch the memory usage on the system monitor
> Can the Linux System Monitor be trusted? Chances are, no. What's the output of "top", sorted by memory usage, on your machine?
also, can you attach a screenshot of said "linux system monitor"?
the screen shot shows Firefox is using nearly 100 mb of memory for merely 3 tabs.
for comment #2, please look at screen shot in #3. For #1, sorry I don't understand what the output of 'top' means. What's it and how do I get it, please?
run a terminal, and type "top" there. hit M (uppercase) then, to sort by memory usage.
thanks for the how-to. Comment #6 has the screen shot of the 'top' output. (don't know how to make an attachment within a text comment).
Hmm... That's showing 105MB virtual but only 39MB resident, with no swap being used. Those numbers don't add up.
I also suffer this problem. When I perform top, I have four firefox lines at the top with: top - 13:12:24 up 16 min, 2 users, load average: 0.20, 0.21, 0.19 Tasks: 93 total, 2 running, 90 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie Cpu(s): 11.4% us, 0.7% sy, 0.0% ni, 88.0% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si Mem: 254408k total, 246860k used, 7548k free, 14372k buffers Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 58388k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 1375 richard 16 0 74124 55m 27m S 0.0 22.3 0:27.95 firefox-bin 1376 richard 16 0 74124 55m 27m S 0.0 22.3 0:00.00 firefox-bin 1377 richard 16 0 74124 55m 27m S 0.0 22.3 0:00.38 firefox-bin 1379 richard 16 0 74124 55m 27m S 0.0 22.3 0:00.13 firefox-bin It has the unfortunate effect, I believe, of crashing firefox or freezing up my desktop when it starts using too much memory. For instance, if I go to http://perso.wanadoo.fr/zwazo.ivol//slack10.html http://perso.wanadoo.fr/zwazo.ivol//slack.html and http://perso.wanadoo.fr/zwazo.ivol//misc.html and browsing every wallpaper (not simultaneously in their own tabs, but sequentially, with one closed before the next), my computer's memory quickly runs out, and firefox is either kind enough to die or mean enough to freeze up my desktop.
Richard, I suggest you read up on what 'top' outputs. Those 4 lines are 4 threads. They share an address space. In that output, Firefox is using a total of 55MB of memory.
(In reply to comment #10) > Richard, I suggest you read up on what 'top' outputs. Those 4 lines are 4 > threads. They share an address space. In that output, Firefox is using a total > of 55MB of memory. Aw! That terrified me. Thank you. I do suffer from having virtual memory usage increase with my many images opened, without decreasing when they are closed, but that has nothing to do with this, I see. Sorry.
Product: Browser → Seamonkey
Is the problem has any connections to bug 259672 and bug 257016?
Assignee: general → firefox
Product: Mozilla Application Suite → Firefox
QA Contact: general → general
Version: Trunk → unspecified
This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01". This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code. While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug (given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more reproduction information if you have it. If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved. Thank you for your help in this matter. The latest beta releases can be obtained from: Firefox: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/ Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html Seamonkey: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/
This problem looks related to X window memory issue. It seems there are quite some bugs are related - on Linux memory consumption, on X window resource buffer, etc. I'm not sure how the use of Cairo code will affect those bugs. Maybe we should have a general bug for all these problems.
On my computer, firefox also use an awfull lot of memory... from top: ---------------------- PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 11285 phantom 16 0 365m 277m 18m S 0.0 27.4 62:15.64 firefox-bin 11289 phantom 16 0 365m 277m 18m S 0.0 27.4 0:00.11 firefox-bin 11290 phantom 16 0 365m 277m 18m S 0.0 27.4 0:03.49 firefox-bin 11292 phantom 16 0 365m 277m 18m S 0.0 27.4 2:51.16 firefox-bin 26666 phantom 16 0 365m 277m 18m S 0.0 27.4 0:00.00 firefox-bin ---------------------- open tab: slashdot, websudoku.com :) and this bugzilla tab, nothing else... running mozilla 1.0.7 on gentoo... ebuild and USE flags: www-client/mozilla-firefox-1.0.7-r2 -debug +gnome -ipv6 +java -mozcalendar -mozdevelop -moznoxft -mozsvg +truetype -xinerama -xprint using the "standard" cflags dosen't fix the problem... (-O3 -march=athlon-xp -pipe) The same system monitor than comment #3 show: ----------------------- Memory: 365.9MB VM Size: 365.9MB Resident Memory: 277.3MB Shared Memory: 18.5MB RSS Memory: 277.3MB X Server Memory: 83.7MB ----------------------- as for X: x11-base/xorg-x11-6.8.2-r6 -3dfx +3dnow +bitmap-fonts -cjk -debug -dlloader -dmx -doc -font-server -insecure-drivers -ipv6 -minimal +mmx +nls -nocxx +opengl +pam +sdk +sse -static +truetype-fonts +type1-fonts (-uclibc) -xprint +xv I can give more info if needed...
Not sure under which "Firefox uses tons of memory" bug report to make this comment, but I guess this bug is as good as any. I think the easiest way to duplicate the Firefox memory usage problems is to just leave the same instance of Firefox running for days (this always duplicates the problem for me.) I just quit a Firefox process I had running probably since last week, I got up to 6 open windows, a total of around two dozen tabs. After closing the first five windows, I made note of my system's memory usage, then quit the process from the last open window. After all was said and done, Firefox released a total of 1023MB of memory, 540MB from swap, 497MB from physical. I think just closing the first five windows released 300-400MB of memory. That is an unreal amount of memory for a web browser to consume. I've got 768 megs physical and a gig of swap. My swap was maxed out and I had about 120 megs of physical remaining. I treat Firefox like most people treat Windows - if I want it to run well I have to restart it occasionally (daily would probably be best.) This really needs to be fixed; it's been going on for as long as I can remember.
I have also noticed similar symptons on Firefox for Windows platform. The memory usage of Firefox keeps increasing while I keep viewing more and more different webpages. If I open multiple tabs, closing tabs can release some memory, but just release a little bit. Most of the memory taken won't get released until I close firefox. When the firefox gets larger and larger, it gets slower as well.
I'm seeing the same thing on a fully patched Windows XP Pro workstation. Firefox is taking at a minimum 76 MB of RAM. I've seen it take upwards of 100MB of RAM. I'd be happy to provide any necessary details about the workstation.
Bug 342810?
I do experience the same symptoms as described in comment #17. I never experienced memory problems before. Firefox 1.5 could run for days. I know this is vague but Firefox 2.x seems to be more prone to memory hogging than 1.x versions. For the time being I have to exit Firefox 2.0.0.1 when its memory consumption exceeds 300 MBytes as my system only has 512 MBytes of RAM.
Assignee: bross2 → nobody
This bug really isn't helpful. Saying "Firefox uses memory" isn't helpful without information on how it's happening whether it be by checking for leaks or by listing websites which specifically cause high memory usage. While I have no doubt that Firefox can use a lot of memory, without any specific information on how to reproduce the behavior, this bug is really "works for me". If any reporter feels they can narrow down what issue is causing high memory usage using the latest release of Firefox (2.0.0.3 at the time of this writing), please file a new bug with detailed steps on reproducing. Resolving as WORKSFORME.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 18 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
How to reproduce the behaviour? Run Firefox. See comment #16. I'll just keep using Safari and you can bury your head in the sand on this one.
I just realized that this report is pertaining to Linux only. On Linux I don't have this problem. In my comment #20 I was referring to Firefox on Windows. I still have this problem using FF 2.0.0.5. I guess I'll have to file a separate report...
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