366937 - Firefox doesn't release memory upon closing tabs, and use OpenBSD allocator for fix it

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(NSPR :: NSPR, defect)

Description

[Alexander Krotov]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061208 Firefox/2.0.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061208 Firefox/2.0.0.1

Sorry for my english..
When I open firefox a blank page, he use a memory (VSZ and RSS memory accordingly, watched from ps):
103060 23540 (kb)
Open ~100 tabs (text and images) and he use:
143028 61900 
After close all tabs:
141200 60832 

Memory doesn't release to OS.

I read this russian page:http://mr.himki.net/index-alloc.html and use OpenBSD allocator:http://mr.himki.net/OpenBSD_malloc_Linux.c, compile it: gcc -shared -fPIC -O2 OpenBSD_malloc_Linux.c -o malloc.so
and start Firefox: LD_PRELOAD=/path/to/malloc.so firefox

Firefox use:
105256 25536
open ~100 text and images pages:
145976 63156
and close all tabs:
126100 46116

Firefox release memory, but not all.

http://polar.ihep.su:8002/mozilla_malloc_linux-patch.gz - this is a patch for mozilla-based programs source

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.open firefox
2.open some tabs
3.close all tabs
firefox doesn't return memory
Actual Results:  
I tested Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061208 Firefox/2.0.0.1 and Windows version Firefox 2.0. In Windows version this bug doesn't work, memory release.

Comment 1

[Alexander Krotov]

Attachment: OpenBSD allocator patch for mozilla

Comment 2

[Andrew Schultz]

Comment on attachment 251411 [details]
OpenBSD allocator patch for mozilla

bugzilla "patches" have to be text/plain

Comment 3

[Andrew Schultz]

see also bug 130157

Comment 4

[Wan-Teh Chang]

Andrew, could you reassign this bug to the right product:component?  Thanks.

Comment 5

[Andrew Schultz]

wtc, the attached patch only touches prmem.c, so this is the right product:component (unless the problem shouldn't be fixed in prmem.c).  bug 130157 is in a different component, but it contains only discussion of the problem.

Comment 6

[Wan-Teh Chang]

Attachment: OpenBSD allocator patch for mozilla (as patch)

NSPR used this allocator before.  Its source code is in
mozilla/nsprpub/pr/src/malloc/prmalloc.c.  You can find it
by searching for "BEER" in the NSPR source tree:
http://lxr.mozilla.org/nspr/search?string=BEER

The reason NSPR used this allocator was to have a version
of malloc and free that was safe with respect to NSPR's own
user-level threads.  Now all the major Unix platforms have
native threads, so it's no longer necessary to override
malloc and free for thread safety.

The decision to override malloc and free for better performance
or more efficient use of memory should be left to the application.

Comment 7

[Peter Weilbacher]

This was obsoleted in the meantime by the switch to jemalloc, right? Not sure how to mark this bug, though.

Comment 8

[Flávio Etrusco]

Will somebody please close this?

Comment 9

[Wan-Teh Chang]

Marked the bug WONTFIX.