261424 - Firefox uses excess memory, freezes when downloading with long history

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 159107

(Toolkit :: Downloads API, defect)

Description

[Jeff Schaffer]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10

I download a lot of astronomical pictures for my screensaver, ranging in size
from 50K to over 10MB, and I was catching up on the latest Mars and Saturn
images today. I have been noticing a long delay from the point when I submit a
download request until the download actually begins. At one point today, Firefox
paused...and never started the download or even responded again. I started task
manager, saw Firefox's CPU at 99%, and killed it. I started Firefox again and
resumed my downloading. Same delay, but after a few more files, it froze again.
This time I noticed that my overall memory usage was unusually high. I killed it
and started again, but the memory usage did not return to where it was when I
killed Firefox, it was some 50 MB lower. As I resumed downloading, I noticed
that each download increased memory usage by ~10 MB. After yet another freeze
and restart, something made me scroll through the download history, and I
realized for the first time that it was enormously long (hundreds? a thousand? I
can't say), so I clicked the cleanup button. Memory consumption dropped and the
delay from clicking to start a download until it actually started disappeared.
Will be hard for me to reproduce, but the evidence is compelling.

Reproducible: Didn't try
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Download lots of files.
2.Notice the delay from submit to start increases.
3.Eventually Firefox will freeze on a download request.
4.Cleanup the download history and speed will resume and freezes disappear.

Actual Results:  
Firefox experienced the download delay, then freezes and high memory
consumption, then began working normally again

Expected Results:  
Never exhibit the delay, greatly increased, memory consumption, or freezes.

Comment 1

[Dr Ilias G. Kastanas]

Hi Ben...  I experience the same sort of thing.  Large file downloads
make the Manager freeze up, as well as Firefox itself.  The Pause/
Resume buttons are either dead or do nothing.

Ilias

[e-mail]

Comment 2

[Kevin Brosnan]

This bug is a dupe of bug 159107

To fix this find your profile folder and delete the file download.rdf this will
clear the download manager list.

To find your profile folder follow the "Locate your profile folder" directions
at the following link.
http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/profile

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 159107 ***