527413 - firefox runs out of virtual memory address space (virtual size) after some time

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[MJ]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3

Firefox crashes due to virtual address space shortage. It happens over a longer period of time e.g. 1d even if its use is moderate. The leak of virtual address space has been observed.

After leaving my firefox session running over a weekend I found it crashed on Monday. It take 1d08h09m, of witch initial 5h was medium use to up to 10 tabs, while for the rest 43h the PC with the browser was left alone with the tabs opened. The working set (mem usage) at the time of crush was 1,196,532K (while peak was 1,349,496K), but eventually the browser run out of virtual address space.
reaching 2,020,612K as reported by process explorer.
Of course it might have been a logic of one of the opened sites that causes it to leak, however, it is not a reason to get whole browser crashed in such a case. If this is a case then each tab should be a separate process to allow for use of more resources.
The average CPU usage was before the creash 3,08% CPU.


Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Open the following tabs
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366912%28VS.85%29.aspx
http://blogs.s60.com/old-blogs/web-browser-for-s60/
http://weblogs.asp.net/kdente/archive/2004/06/04/148145.aspx
http://www.nextag.com/external-wifi-card/stores-html
http://www.google.com/search?q=wifi+setup&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&lr=lang_en
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/184802/
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/833721
http://forum.sysinternals.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=14247
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx
http://www.tampere.world-guides.com/tampere_shopping.html
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=H%C3%A4meenkatu,+tampere&lr=lang_en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=H%C3%A4meenkatu,+Tampere,+Suomi&ei=nDz0SsvqD9mQsAbjsd3eAQ&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CAsQ8gEwAA
http://www.google.com/search?q=Koskikeskus%2C+tampere&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&lr=lang_en
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=lang_en&q=symbian+browser+name&start=10&sa=N
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Bug_writing_guidelines
https://mail.google.com/
2. Wait about 2 days to notice crash due to virtual address space shortage. Or just watch how the virtual address space size grows for at least an hour.

Actual Results:  
Virual address space fluctuates and on average grows although the browser.

Expected Results:  
Virtual address space fluctuates but stays on average at the same level.

Used Process Explorer to observe virtual size figure of Firefox process.

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

The seperate process for each tab/window is another bug.
Do you tested this without addons ?
(http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe+Mode)

Comment 2

[MJ]

I tried this time a safe mode browser with all extensions/plugins disabled, options restored, bookmarks reset.
I opened the websites listed above plus this bug report in separate tabs.
After 16 hours this is the result:
* Private bytes increased from 136MB to 450MB
* Virtual size increased from 237MB to 554MB
I closed all the tabs beside the bug report and the numbers went down to 407MB and 540MB respectively.
It seems that this time it is not virtual space but the memory leaking as well at a rate of 20MB/hour.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

MJ,  If you can reproduce using safe mode and newest revisions of version 3.6, what memory usage at 0hr and 16hr?

Comment 4

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

No reply, INCOMPLETE. Please retest with Firefox 3.6.13 or later and a new profile (http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles). If you continue to see this issue with the newest firefox and a new profile, then please comment on this bug.

Comment 5

[tsukiyomaru0]

It has started happening to me and it's obscene too, it can even cause resource exhaustion with games and Discord, two apps with no relation to Firefox. Here's an excerpt from Event Viewer:
Windows successfully diagnosed a low virtual memory condition. The following programs consumed the most virtual memory: firefox.exe (11744) consumed 834490368 bytes, firefox.exe (11412) consumed 488161280 bytes, and firefox.exe (9576) consumed 479518720 bytes.