319667 - With many tabs open, dialogs that open such as "Preferences" or "Save File As" freeze Firefox

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 305970

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Mark Kane]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD amd64; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051201 Firefox/1.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD amd64; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051201 Firefox/1.5

I tried to search for this one but did not come up with anything relevant to version 1.5 (bugs I found were either from 2003 or earlier this year before 1.5 was released). The problem is somewhat complicated so I will try to explain it the best I can. 

After every clean start of Firefox 1.5 with my tabs restored on startup, clicking on anything that might open a dialog window such as "Preferences", "Save Link As", or "Open File" produces a long hang in the program. It will sit there and freeze up for times varying from 1-3 minutes. I've tried it with only one or two tabs open, and with only a couple open it loads those dialogs fast like it should. However, my SessionSaver extension restores 35+ tabs on startup. When there are that many tabs open (I tried with SessionSaver unloaded as well) it will hang for a couple minutes and then finally display the dialog like it should. I should also point out that it produces a longer hang/freeze the more tabs you have open. If you have 1-2 open it has no freeze/hang. If you have 10, it's a little bit. If you have 35 tabs or so open, it's a couple minutes long.

Now another weird thing about it is, it only happens once per Firefox "Session". If you wait 1-2 minutes when it locks up for it to come back and then you continue using FF, opening "Preferences" or "Save Link As" an hour later if the program is still running after the initial hang will load right up. An example of that: 

Open Firefox which restores 35+ tabs
Try to open "Preferences". It freezes.
Wait 1-3 minutes and do not minimize FF or it will not recover
Preferences opens. Close it
Come back an hour later and open Preferences again. It loads right up instantly.

Just a note, this did not happen in 1.0.7 at all. 

FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE [amd64]
Firefox 1.5
Athlon64 3000+
1.5GB RAM

-Mark



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Launch Firefox
2. Have many tabs open
3. Try to open "Preferences" or "Save Link As" or "Load File" or any dialog like that

Actual Results:  
Firefox hangs for a couple minutes. If I do not try to minimize Firefox, it will recover in that 1-2 minutes and I can continue using it without having to kill the process.

Expected Results:  
Performed the action (opening Preferences, Opening a File, Saving Link As, etc) without freezing/hanging up.

No Themes. Only extension is "SessionSaver", but have tried without SessionSaver and the same things happened.

Comment 1

[Adam Guthrie]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 305970 ***

Comment 2

[Tuukka Tolvanen (sp3000)]

re bug 305970 comment 67 -- it's fixed for fx3; I'd expect it to get fixed for 2, but perhaps not for 1.5 updates. http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/roadmap.html and http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox:2.0_Product_Planning:Draft_Plan have tentative dates.

Comment 3

[Mark Kane]

Thanks for the response. I see projected dates are 2006, but I understand it's hard to tell those things with such an effort like this. 

Would you know how I could get the code with the fix now? The other bug report is marked as RESOLVED/Fixed but I'm not sure where to get that code. As mentioned, I only see nightly "builds" in binary form, but I'm on the amd64 version of FreeBSD so those binaries won't work. I'd like to at least try the fixed code if possible because this is a real problematic bug for me since Firefox sometimes crashes on some sites I visit (which I do report), and then it does this hanging whenever I come back from a crash. 

Thanks

-Mark

Comment 4

[Tuukka Tolvanen (sp3000)]

the fix is in cvs trunk; http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Build_Documentation has instructions for getting source. http://cbeard.typepad.com/mozilla/2005/11/mozilla_product.html has a more recent branch graph. further questions should go to e.g. mozillazine forums, with its larger audience and all :)