465477 - Firefox Memory Leak

Status: VERIFIED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[20ac93a2]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.17) Gecko/20080919 K-Meleon/1.5.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.17) Gecko/20080919 K-Meleon/1.5.1

For the past few years I have experienced memory leaks in Firefox, that just seem to happen over a period of time surfing.

I have not really documented this, I have just learned to live with it, but when version 3x came out I thought there would be an end to this.

I can't give real specifics on this, because it has not been somethign I have really paid attention to, but I do know for a fact that for the past few years I have had problems with FF locking up and crashing and running at 250MB-300MB.

I have had this happen on three differnt OSs too, BSD, Linux and XP...

XP is all I'm concerned with right now.

All I can say is sooner or later after just some basic surfing, FF just acts up,  the memory just builds over time.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Surf browser with one tab open
2. Java and Flash installed (extensions or addons)
3. Flash and streaming media seems to effect FF at times, also when opening up another Window of FF then closing it.
Actual Results:  
Firefox will run at over 200MB

Expected Results:  
Firefox to run at or lower then 100MB

Please see this post for information pertaining to this bug report:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=939965

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

You should try to upgrade to a Firefox 3 browser (Gecko 1.9.0.4) - it uses a lot less memory. But K-Meleon 1.5.1 still uses the old Gecko (1.8.1.17) from Firefox 
2, so that's not an option for you.

Note that plugins are still the biggest culprit, even in Firefox 3.1. Flash is currently more or less behaved (releases memory when you go away from the streaming site).

Comment 2

[20ac93a2]

Well I don't see anything I can do.

As I mentioned I have been dealing with this issue for a few years.

After seeing something like this for 3 years I don't see how I could be doing something to cause this, highly unlikely, since this has happened under three different OSs, and on several machines all with different hardware.

I've seen this memory problem as far back to the beginnings of version 2.

As you mention plugins for being the culprit, I can see that possibly what is going on here is that Firefox isn't working to well with such things, not to say it's really the problem of Firefox, but then again I don't see other browsers behaving in this way, so it seems clear that other developers have overcome these obstacles that the Mozilla team has yet to work out.

Regardless of the steps I take, in what way I surf, plugins, addons, extensions, how many tabs open, etc., the end result is always the same, sooner or later the memory is going to start creeping up. Now maybe there is a definite pattern here causing this, and now I'm trying to keep my eye on it so when this occurs I can note it for the developers, the problem now is having the time to just sit and do this, so all I can hope for is when I need to use Firefox I'll just keep my eye on it. The problem is this isn't always happening every second. I personally can vaguely remember this happening maybe once in a month or two.

One thing I'd suggest the Mozilla team to do is rip apart K-Meleon and compare code, because even though K-Meleon is using the older Gecko that Firefox2 used, it still didn't have the problems that Firefox2 did using less memory. All I can tell you is that K-Meleon behaves better as a browser when it comes to memory usage, and I personally think it would be very beneficial for the developers to find out why, and try to incorporate this into Firefox, and then maybe you'll have the reasons and solution then for this problem.

As soon as something comes up I'll post it here...

THANKS

Comment 3

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

I agree with Jo, you should upgrade to 3. Especially 3.1, which has much better memory usage. But, Read http://new.quality.mozilla.org/bug-writing-guidelines#memory, and please read the thread you gave. There are some good pints there you should try.

Comment 4

[20ac93a2]

I noticed some more problems with 3.0.4, these seem to be related to having issues with Flash and Java script. I noticed over the past week many sites I went to that seemed pretty heavy on the flash and javascript side were causing problems with Firefox locking up and crashing and the memory getting high again.

So by your recommendations I am using 3.1b1 right now. If I continue to see these problems in the beta this will be the last time I use Firefox, and I will move on to K-Meleon.

I'm sorry to say this, but in the past 6 months of using K-Meleon I have not had any problems, for speed and performance it has been turning out to be a better browser then Firefox.

I understand that you are developers, but I also have many years experience in the computer industry as a technician, and I'll make my own recommendations, that the Mozilla developers need to really look at K-Meleon to see what is going on with this browser, to see if there is anything there that can help improve Firefox.

THANKS

P.S. If I see any more of these memory issues or plugin issues with 3.1b1 I'll report them here...

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

dasfox in comment #4
> P.S. If I see any more of these memory issues or plugin issues with 3.1b1 I'll
> report them here...

no response, so let's assume  => WORKSFORME

if you still have issues when using the newest versions of FF, java ,etc , please identify specific use cases (URL) that can be reproduced to cause exceptional amounts of memory. (200MB is not necessarily exceptional)