499477 - Firefox 3 still periodically hits harddrive hard

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[ynotswim]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060215 Firefox/3.0.11
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060215 Firefox/3.0.11

It's almost an year ago, when FF 3 first available, I reported the problem that it hits harddrive periodically (not entering a bug):

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=812575

And it didn't get resolved, I decided to stay with Firefox 2.

Since it has been a year almost passed, and it becomes more evident that I have to move to FF3, mainly due to the security patches that I should apply. I gave in and switched to FF3 about a month ago.

And this problem returns.

Many people have blamed on Symentac in the past, so I tried unloaded the Anti-virus on my laptop running XP.

That didn't help, the scan of harddrive returns even I do NOT have symentac anti-virus running. So I turned the anti-virus back on to protect myself.

I also tried to use the save mode to run the Firefox, and a little bit later, this scanning of harddrive appears.

I am saying this is a FF3 problem based on the following observations:

1) FF 2 doesn't have this behavior, and FF3 does.
2) When the "scan" begins, the cursor in FF3 becomes busy, and the program becomes "not responding." No activity can be done in FF3, however, other applications on my computer can be interacted as normal. For example, I can IM, I can write in emacs or MS Word. Only FF3 is so busy in the la la land.

The anti-phishing option has been disabled all these time. 



Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

I guess you tried Firefox 3 for only a few hours (at the most) ? If you're seeing this while idle (not browsing), it can't be the bookmarks/history database in places.sqlite. Unless you have a very large history file, and a large delete is in progress (a few people reported that), which can take a while.

A frequently encountered problenm is the loading of the urlclassifier3.sqlite database (for phishing/malware classification), which can take some time to complete (24MB) when it's initially loaded. It should stop after a while.

Both issues are with the sqlite database, and the performance of it which can be slow under some operating systems or on slow disks. There are a few bugs about the performance of the fsync operation for instance, for which Firefox 3.5 should be a bit better than 3.0, although the bigger changes are apparently for a later release.

Did you try it with a new profile ?

Without more details, like some info on what Firefox is actually doing when it hits the harddisk, there's not much we can do here.

Comment 2

[ynotswim]

Not a few hours, I mentioned that I installed this FF3 means at least for couple months on this home laptop. While the other work laptop used the FF3 for more than 1 year. Both machines have the same problem. 

My history is set to 10 days to keep, my places.sqlite is 8.47MB. I have no idea it's big or not. 

I wish I could give steps to reproduce this problem, and I delaying opening a bug is to hope that the forum could be a place that gives me some tips on debugging where the problem might be. 

I will be happy to provide more information I can for this problem if I can. As for now, I have no idea what other "details" might be relevant for reporting this problem. Any suggestion is welcome and I will give it a try. 

I have tried new profile before, no luck. 

As I am writing this now, another "hard disk scan" began, the hard drive light lit up continuously with noise, I had to wait for about 30 seconds to be able to move my cursor in this FF3 window...

Comment 3

[Jo Hermans]

You can use a tool like Process Monitor (downloadable from Microsoft) to see which files are being written :

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx

It will report a lot though, you might want to filter on file operations. Then try to examine which process does all these file operations.

The problem is that this tool reports a massive amount of data (you will be amazed what's going on behind the scenes).

Note that your history is probably set at the default, which is 180 days or 40.000 entries, whichever is smaller (the 10 days that you mention is the minimum). But a 8MB file is normal for a daily surfer (I have 9MB at home, and 14MB at work).

Comment 4

[ynotswim]

Thanks Jo. After I installed that Process Monitor, I crashed it twice already out of like 5 runs. :) When that monitor is not crashing, it indeed gives me so much stuff, as you indicated. I see that there are certain filters already set by default. I am not sure if that already excludes information needed. 

I tried to fire this monitor up when this behavior happens. I saw a bunch service.exe activities apply on Registry keys. Normally in a sequence like

RegOpenKey
RegQueryValue 
RegCloseKey

I don't see many file i/o. Again, perhaps the default filters do not include them. Or perhaps the business is due to these RegKey operations? I don't know.  

Any help on what filters I should set is appreciated. As I mentioned earlier, I do not know what kind of information or details I should be looking for regarding this problem….

Comment 5

[timeless]

there's an option "drop filtered events", you really want to use it.

you could add a filter for firefox.exe
and maybe a filter for only FileIO.

Anything that isn't listed isn't our fault :)

you can right click on things to add filters based on them. but if it isn't our fault, it isn't our fault :)

Comment 6

[ynotswim]

(In reply to comment #5)
> there's an option "drop filtered events", you really want to use it.
> 
> you could add a filter for firefox.exe
> and maybe a filter for only FileIO.

I will try that. Thanks for the tips. 

> Anything that isn't listed isn't our fault :)
> 
> you can right click on things to add filters based on them. but if it isn't our
> fault, it isn't our fault :)

I sincerely hope this is the case. :) But two things I want to point out: 1) this process monitor is not necessarily reveals what the problem is - although I hope so.  2) This behavior only happens when Firefox 3 is running and only freezes Firefox 3, and Firefox 2 has no such problem before. That's the rational behind this bug report. 

I believe that I have seen other posts reporting similar behaviors in the forum in the past, but I think most people just gave up.

Comment 7

[ynotswim]

Well, before I crashes Process Monitor even more, I tried 3.5 (how come I didn't think this before???!!!) ... 

Hours later, the behavior I described in this bug has not appeared!!! 

Although I think I can say that I was right about FF3's problem, but I am just happy that 3.5 fixes something, somehow and someway. :) 

I will give it couple more days, if FF 3.5 continue to be quiet, I will close this bug, and let it rest in peace. Bye bye FF3. :)

Comment 8

[ynotswim]

I am closing it because 3.5 seems get rid of this behavior automatically so no point to investigate in 3.0 any more. 

Thanks for all the help and suggestions.