95130 - Mailnews stays in RAM after being closed

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Reproduction:
1. Open |top| in a console on Linux, press M to sort by memory usage.
   (Rr open the Task Manager on Windows 2000.)
2. Start Mozilla Navigator
3. Open Mailnews via Tasks menu in Mozilla
4. Wait until everying loaded (I have lots of accounts)
5. Close Mailnews by closing the 3pane window using the window manager.

Expected result:
Memory (RAM) usage after Steps 2 and 5 match (almost)

Actual result:
Mem usage afetr step 5 is almost the same as after step 4, which is for me about
10 MB more than after step 2.
Concrete: ("RSS" numbers)
After step 2: 25 MB
After step 4: 34 MB
After step 5: 34 MB
In short, Mailnews never stops, only the window closes.

It is not the garbage collelctor or something either - the memory consumption
doesn't decrease even after 10 mins.

Additional Comments:
I disabled "Check for new mail every ..." (during runtime) - no difference.

I hope, I don't have to argue, why this is wrong. People use the browser all of
the time and aften have it running all day. OTOH, they read mail only once in a
while. It is not justifiable to consume the memory all day and it is not
acceptable to have to close alll browser windows just to make Mailnews unload.

Comment 1

[Jacek Piskozub]

Mozilla checks mail even after you close the mail window. I believe this is the
correct behavior (at least this is what Netscape 4.* did). This means that at
least with "Check for new messages every xx minutes" checked, we cannot unload
the mail module from memory. 

It may be really different when mail is not supposed to check the mail in
background.

Comment 2

[Greg Miller]

Correct me if I'm out-of-date or wrong, but I don't believe Mozilla currently
unloads any libraries once they've been loaded. It's also my understanding that
folders are never closed and unloaded, either.

Comment 3

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Jacek, a biff doesn't need 10 MB (rather a few hundred KB). Also, I must be able
to get to the state that I had before I loaded Mailnews, without closing the
browser.
Greg, might be, but it would a severe bug.

Comment 4

[Greg Miller]

The bug on not closing dbs is bug 64868.

Comment 5

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Note: that bug says "We should probably keep around the n most recently used
db's and close the rest" (during runtime). Here, no traces at all of Mailnews
should be left.

Comment 6

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

When working with Mailnews, I noticed another sideeffect of this bug: I cannot
log out of my server either. Not only does this drain server resources, but it
prevents me from working around some Mailnews bugs. In some cases, something
horks up (e.g. folder creation with UW-IMAP) and can only be fixed by logging
out/in of the serevr account. Due to this bug, this means that I have to shut
down all of Mozilla!

Compare <http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11056#c26> (plan to use
Mailnews for biff).

Comment 7

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> I cannot log out of my server either.

Compare bug 42456.

Comment 8

[Stefan Borggraefe]

This also happens on Windows XP (using build 2002072408). After opening MailNews
and closing it again all the memory occupied for it remains allocated (this is
at least what the Task-Manager tells me).

-> All/All 

I also think this bug deserves the footprint keyword.

Comment 9

[Jason M. Abels]

This is almost surely related to the problem found in bug 42456. The problem
seems to be that the mail components stay very much active while the mozilla
process is running. 

Comment 10

[Jason M. Abels]

*** Bug 210135 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[Jason M. Abels]

This is the same problem describe in  	42456

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 42456 ***

Comment 12

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Huch. No. Did you noticed that I filed both bugs and also marked them dependent?
Wouldn't I have marked them dup, if they were? The other bug can be fixed
without this one being fixed.

Comment 13

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

following lead of bug 42456

Comment 14

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

To bug opener, do you still see problem you state by bug summary?

Comment 15

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

Please test yourself and stop asking that in all my bugs.

Comment 16

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

Please don't misunderstand question. Question in this case is:
  still see? probably yes, because design is not basically changed.
  and, probably you see on MS Win if config.trim_on_minimize=true is not set,
  because MS Win's memory management is page Trimming instead of Page Stealing.
  If it's Virtual Memory column value instead of "Mem Usage" column value(you
  call "RAM") of Win's Task Manager, probably it's seen with Linux too.
Some in comments may have been changed.
  - msf is always opened => msf is closed after folder switch sooner or later.
  - logout is not issued => many "logout is not issued" problem are already
    resolved, except in some irregular situations. However, Sm's Mail&News
    may still have issue due to "Mail&News window close != Mail&News Shutdown".
As problems you pointed in this bug are seen in other bugs too, I wanted to clarify issue and remaining problems in first bug by you. I wanted to know what was already changed and what is not changed yet or kept.

Comment 17

[Philip Chee]

Ben, I think MailNews is active all the time even with the mailnews windows closed. Certainly the BIFF notifications do work. Closing as WONTFIX for the time being. Please re-open if you feel that this bug is still valid. Even better, attach a patch?

Comment 18

[Ben Bucksch (:BenB)]

> I think MailNews is active all the time even with the mailnews windows closed.

Yes, that's the bug here.

It's fixed for me, though, by Thunderbird :). I'm therefore OK with WONTFIX.