511451 - Investigate Memory Usage On Fennec

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[cmtalbert]

This is an "in general" type of bug, but it's going to manifest differently on different devices.  

For example on Maemo, running with default settings (no virtual swap enabled) I found that wordpress.com's "new post" page wouldn't load, gmail wouldn't load etc.  Turning these on, all of these JS heavy pages would load.  Previously, they would merely show a blank white screen.  But after turning on swap, the pages would load properly.

For beta, we need to heavily relnote this.  For release, we need to investigate.

* Some items to investigate (please file bugs blocking this one for specific work items once we have an action plan)
** What is our image cache usage?
** What is our JIT cache memory impact?
** What is our "normal, idle" memory usage impact?
** What else can we do to use less memory?

= Actual = 
Fennec really requires virtual memory swap turned on

= Expected =
Fennec should work pretty well or at least be useful without that setting.

Comment 1

[Tim Riley [:timr]]

I also ran across this during the fennec test day.  

We also need to get some info available for community members/beta users so they don't get frustrated over this.  I am happy to add something to a wiki page or make a support article.  Just give me a pointer about a good place to put this.

Steps to turn on swap (virtual memory) in an n810:
1) Select Control Panel
2) double click Memory
3) Select the "Virtual Memory" tab
4) Click on "Use virtual memory" check box

Comment 2

[Aakash Desai [:aakashd]]

Clint, is this still happening with the browserd stuff loaded onto Fennec with the latest nightly builds?

Comment 3

[[:Cww]]

I gave my Nokia N810 to aakash, I can't do any testing for you guys, sorry.

Comment 4

[Marko Pellikka]

Should we start looking at this again now when memory consumption has got some higher since n810?

Comment 5

[Graydon Hoare :graydon]

Memory usage is very high as of 2010-09-23 nightly, on samsung galaxy s. 110mb consumed loading 2 pages, on a system with typically only 150mb free memory. System browser consumes 7mb for same loads. System begins paging-to-flash, browser responsiveness goes to zero.

Comment 7

[BMO Automation]

Closing all opened bug in a graveyard component