506421 - thunderbird generates zombie threads, multiple processes on Linux, causing out of file descriptors after opening many messages

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Alex Mondshain]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.1) Gecko/20090717 Fedora/3.5.1-1.fc11 Firefox/3.5.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.1) Gecko/20090715 Thunderbird/3.0b3

Hi 

Starting from version 3.0b2 shipped with Fedora 11 and now with version b3 i downloaded i am having troubles with Thunderbird generating zombies at least on every message view, up to 40-80 per message ! 

alexm    27872 27868  2 23:03 pts/5    Sl+    0:02 ./thunderbird-bin -safe-mode           
alexm    28578 27872  0 23:14 pts/5    00:00:00 [thunderbird-bin] <defunct>
alexm    28579 27872  0 23:14 pts/5    00:00:00 [thunderbird-bin] <defunct>
alexm    28580 27872  0 23:14 pts/5    00:00:00 [thunderbird-bin] <defunct>
alexm    28581 27872  0 23:14 pts/5    00:00:00 [thunderbird-bin] <defunct>
alexm    28582 27872  0 23:14 pts/5    00:00:00 [thunderbird-bin] <defunct>
alexm    28583 27872  0 23:14 pts/5    00:00:00 [thunderbird-bin] <defunct>
alexm    28584 27872  0 23:14 pts/5    00:00:00 [thunderbird-bin] <defunct>
alexm    28585 27872  0 23:14 pts/5    00:00:00 [thunderbird-bin] <defunct>
alexm    28586 27872  0 23:14 pts/5    00:00:00 [thunderbird-bin] <defunct>
alexm    28587 27872  0 23:14 pts/5    00:00:00 [thunderbird-bin] <defunct>


ps -ef | grep thunderbird-bin | wc -l
529

520 zombies in 20 minutes !!!

  
Same picture when running with -safe-mode
stack - trace of a zombie 
[root@alex3 ~]# cat /proc/27973/stack
[<c04388cf>] do_exit+0x631/0x63f
[<c0438951>] do_group_exit+0x74/0x9b
[<c0438990>] sys_exit_group+0x18/0x1c
[<c040945f>] sysenter_do_call+0x12/0x34
[<ffffffff>] 0xffffffff

Will gladly provide any other information...  

One more note, i have 2 IMAP accounts configured.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Start 
2.Open email 
3.
Actual Results:  
/home/alexm 74> ps -ef | grep thunderbird-bin | wc -l
40

Comment 1

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Alex is the issue still present with Thunderbird 3b4 ?

Comment 2

[David :Bienvenu]

these are zombie threads? We create one thread per imap connection, and cache the imap connection on a per-folder basis. Do you have any extensions installed?

Comment 3

[Alex Mondshain]

Hi 

The behaviour is still same on b4 , fedora build, I did not check this with mozilla build yet.

No extensions, I tested this in a safe mode with all extensions disabled.

Comment 4

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Alex are you using things like LDAP, kerberos  ? How does a netstat -as look when you close thunderbird are there still connections to your email servers ?

Comment 5

[Alex Mondshain]

Hi 

This bug can be closed, somehow the new version of thunderbird was picking up plugins from .mozilla/plugins folder , and it was trying to load each plugin every time i opened email, each plugin was generating a zombie process.

Interesting that old version and even firefox was not using this folder...

Sorry for being silent for so long, but I figured this out just last week.

Alex M

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #5)
> somehow the new version of thunderbird was picking up
> plugins from .mozilla/plugins folder , and it was trying to load each plugin
> every time i opened email, each plugin was generating a zombie process.
> 
> Interesting that old version and even firefox was not using this folder...

Alex, thanks for the update. Some questions to wrap up:
- no idea how that happened?
- did it cause high memory usage?
- did it degrade performance?
- did .mozilla/plugins include enigmail? (ref: Bug 519226 high memory on Linux with Enigmail)
- how did you resolved the issue?

rs, any thoughts?

Comment 7

[Alex Mondshain]

> Alex, thanks for the update. Some questions to wrap up:
> - no idea how that happened?
Some left over files, nothing except  tb 3.x was using them 
> - did it cause high memory usage?
No
> - did it degrade performance?
Linux run out of file descriptors after opening couple of emails
> - did .mozilla/plugins include enigmail? (ref: Bug 519226 high memory on Linux
> with Enigmail)
No Enigmail 
> - how did you resolved the issue?
Removed all plugins from .mozilla/plugins folder 
> 
> rs, any thoughts?
There are differences between the way FF and TB 2x loading .mozilla/plugins folder, or loading the plugins, and to me it seems that something is broken here.
But i can finally move on and use a new version.

Alex M

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

linux folks, 
Do we know if this odd ball issue can happen to others? 
Or, can this be closed?

(In reply to comment #5)
> This bug can be closed, somehow the new version of thunderbird was picking up
> plugins from .mozilla/plugins folder , and it was trying to load each plugin
> every time i opened email, each plugin was generating a zombie process.
> 
> Interesting that old version and even firefox was not using this folder...

(In reply to comment #5)
>> - how did you resolved the issue?
>Removed all plugins from .mozilla/plugins folder

Comment 9

[Joshua Cranmer [:jcranmer]]

This bug is being marked as INCOMPLETE due to a lack of answer to the previous question. If you can provide an answer to this question, please do so; otherwise, it will remain closed.

Comment 10

[Matěj Cepl]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #8)
> linux folks, 
> Do we know if this odd ball issue can happen to others? 
> Or, can this be closed?

I haven't seen this in our Fedora lately, and Fedora 11 is way over End of Support for the Fedora project. So, no objections here.