Memory leak ?

sbc · Post by **sbc** » December 3rd, 2004, 8:27 am

Setting browser.cache.memory.capacity does not seem to stop the leak for me.

A possible cause may be when I am switching tabs (or windows) when a page is still loading and then that loaded page blocks a popup or contains lots of images/flash animation. Have not tried running in safe-mode, but if I did so it would render one of the most useful feature useless (i.e. extensions). Without them, I may as well go back to IE, or use Maxthon.

System: P4 2.8GHz, 512MB RAM, Intel 82865G Graphics controller (onboard)

Guest · Post by **Guest** » December 3rd, 2004, 8:36 am

Extensions do NOT contribute to memory leaks. So learn to live with it till March or April 2005 when next version is due out.

fnkmaster · Post by **fnkmaster** » December 3rd, 2004, 10:09 am

sbc: I never said it stops memory leaks, just that it substantially reduce overall memory consumption, which quite a few people have confirmed that it does because otherwise FF seems to keep allocating memory for your cache as long as you have free memory. I still shut down FF at the end of the day every day, or whenever I'm done using it, and restart it. It just helps keep things fresh and clean, but in any case, FF is fine for a day of normal browsing for me now.

Guest: you're right, memory leaks are probably in the core HTML rendering engine, and I doubt that extensions significantly contribute to these issues. I am doubtful about these issues being totally fixed by March or April, but we can hope. Honestly, this issue is a nuisance, but I think there are much bigger bugs to get squashed first.

Matarider: you are a troll, the lowest form of life on the internet. Congratulations.

sbc · Post by **sbc** » December 3rd, 2004, 2:45 pm

Didn't think it would, but was worth a try. Hopefully version 1.1 will be faster and with less memory leaks as it will be based on Mozilla 1.8 rather than 1.7

Have had it go up to 300MB RAM usage and had to terminate the task. I wonder what happens if you leave it? Would you get a BSOD?

derrin · Post by **derrin** » December 11th, 2004, 7:44 am

Thanks for the about:config ti[e - works okay - was up to 310 MB this morning - little laptop overheating somewhat!!

WinLin · Post by **WinLin** » December 11th, 2004, 9:53 am

I for one have never experienced either a memory or CPU usage problem, and have been using FF since 0.8. I currently use 1.0, and am now also using a MOOX build of 1.0 on one of the systems, still no problems. I have three Win2K systems on a home office LAN, all have FF and none show that behaviour. I also have FF installed on a Notebook with Win2K, and both my daughter's computers running 98SE, all work fine so I have never seen this "bug" in FF. So I have to wonder is it really a fixable "bug" or something that only occurs for a small percentage due to something in their particular hardware, drivers, or system configuration.

This particular system I'm on right now receives all my business faxes and email so it runs 24/7. I also use it for most of my surfing and leave both Thunderbird and FF running all the time. FF has now been running since a week ago Friday (8 days) when I installed an extension then shut it down and restarted. Due to the posts regarding the memory leak I have started checking it regularly to see if the problem occurs on any of my systems. During the week I saw a max usage of 80 one day when I had 9 tabs open, but right now with only 3 tabs it is back down to 28 without any action on my part except opening and closing tabs. The CPU usage is jumping around between 1% and 8% as I type this post.

Some thoughts:
1. Are most of those experiencing problems running XP? I prefer Win2K so have never tried FF with XP. I have never had any problems with it on Win2K, or 98SE.
2. I also do something different from most. I use a fixed size page file (swap) rather than letting Windows assign it dynamically. I just don't care for the pauses and reshuffling every time Windows changes the swap file size. My swap file is also located on another drive, connected to the secondary controller for the speed benefit. Could using a fixed size rather than having Windows constantly resizing virtual memory help out? Maybe there is a conflict as FF is changing memory requirements and Windows is changing the amount available?
3. Something else I have noticed that seems to be different from everyone else. When I minimize FF it doesn't release any memory. Right now it is using 28.4. If I minimize it then it drops to 28.3. It's not excessive so I don't care, just wondering why mine reacts differently from most that seem to be having trouble with excessive ram usage. It doesn't have anything to do with it but for instance I just minimized Thunderbird and it dropped from 13.4 down to 1.7. I maximize it and it returns to 13.4. But FF doesn't show that behaviour for me.

Just some thoughts.....

derrin · Post by **derrin** » December 11th, 2004, 11:17 am

WinLin

1) I have to say you are absolutely right on the XP / 2K / 98 issue. We have all three on our home LAN and only my machine (XP) shows these memory issues

2) Fixed swap page sizing - Don't have the luxury of a second disk drive, but I do have a fixed size page file as Windows has poor rules for managing dynamic swap. So, in answer to your question, no I don't think this much difference, good effort though.

3) In answer to your third point, see point 1. It is fair to say XP is geared around protecting the user and I quote from someone else "It is a pinched balloon filled with water"

Afraid to say this is the last major Windows Install I shall be making for sometime, unless someone develops an entire home running management system that won't run on my spec machine (AMD Athlon 4 2400, 1.79GHZ 512 MB RAM) - here in lies another bug bare for Windows XP - it grabs 64MB of RAM before booting up and renders it inaccessible for user applications.

Open Source is the way to go, or even Sun, still making enquries about which one will work best for us, but in the meantime, the beast grows larger. One issue is that I don't see a growing games market for Open Source Operating Systems, which renders my case weak for our home LAN

Any Open Source folks wanna bowl that one over?

Cheers

Derrin

WinLin · Post by **WinLin** » December 11th, 2004, 12:25 pm

derrin wrote:Afraid to say this is the last major Windows Install I shall be making for sometime, unless someone develops an entire home running management system that won't run on my spec machine (AMD Athlon 4 2400, 1.79GHZ 512 MB RAM) - here in lies another bug bare for Windows XP - it grabs 64MB of RAM before booting up and renders it inaccessible for user applications.

I agree, Win2K is as far as I plan to go with MS. I used to do SCO Unix many years ago and have set up a Linux box that serves as my my router, firewall, and VPN server. It's comforting to be able to surf the web, open files, etc. pretty much risk free. I have Open Office, Gimp, etc., and I'm reaching the point where it handles everything I need for my "business" use, so I'm relying on it more and more and using Windows less. But games are a problem as all the software houses write for the dominant OS, that's where the money is. And even though I'm 56 years old now, I still enjoy a good simulator or first person shoot-em up game now and then. But maybe I'll try MS's X-Box for my games, it uses a linux OS ;-)

inspector71 · Post by **inspector71** » December 12th, 2004, 7:09 am

Haven't all NT-based versions of Windows always allowed a setting of allocating memory primarily to background applications or foreground applications?

Under XP have a look at the System Control Panel applet. Click the Advanced tab, then the Settings button under the 'Performance' section. Then click the Advanced tab. Under the memory usage section, you can "Adjust for better performance of: Programs / System Cache".

Certainly the minimise/maximise option seems to drop Firefox's memory usage quite a bit for me on my this Windows XPSP2 1.2Ghz Athlon with 512MB of boring old 133 SDRAM, however I question whether that is reflective of triggering a (hack) fix for a Gecko problem or the standard Windows dynamic memory allocation 'Adjusting memory for better performance of an active program'?

To prove this point, try minimising any other program. I just tried minimising Eudora and it dropped from 5MB to 2MB usage. Same difference is seen with a variety of other applications.

WinLin · Post by **WinLin** » December 12th, 2004, 7:28 am

In Win2K Control Panel>System>Advanced you can choose to optimize performance for either 'Applications' or 'Background Services', and/or change the size of the paging file. I have mine set for 'Applications', and the paging file size set to 350, as the highest use I have ever see on this system was 310.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » December 26th, 2004, 7:45 am

WinLin wrote:I for one have never experienced either a memory or CPU usage problem, and have been using FF since 0.8. I currently use 1.0, and am now also using a MOOX build of 1.0 on one of the systems, still no problems. I have three Win2K systems on a home office LAN, all have FF and none show that behaviour. I also have FF installed on a Notebook with Win2K, and both my daughter's computers running 98SE, all work fine so I have never seen this "bug" in FF. So I have to wonder is it really a fixable "bug" or something that only occurs for a small percentage due to something in their particular hardware, drivers, or system configuration.

This particular system I'm on right now receives all my business faxes and email so it runs 24/7. I also use it for most of my surfing and leave both Thunderbird and FF running all the time. FF has now been running since a week ago Friday (8 days) when I installed an extension then shut it down and restarted. Due to the posts regarding the memory leak I have started checking it regularly to see if the problem occurs on any of my systems. During the week I saw a max usage of 80 one day when I had 9 tabs open, but right now with only 3 tabs it is back down to 28 without any action on my part except opening and closing tabs. The CPU usage is jumping around between 1% and 8% as I type this post.

Some thoughts:
1. Are most of those experiencing problems running XP? I prefer Win2K so have never tried FF with XP. I have never had any problems with it on Win2K, or 98SE.

Just some thoughts.....

Winlin,

XP and W2k, happens in both.

You don't mention how much memory you have on your systems and IMO don't sound like you really tax FF that much. Try opening 15 tabs at at time and 50+ windows over the course of a day, and don't close FF for a few days. On my 256meg (yeah I know that's not much), w2k work system it becomes a real pig when FF alone becomes 120meg (I can force that behavior in a couple minutes)!

various versions (1.7x based, nightlies, 1.8 based)

daledude · Post by **daledude** » January 8th, 2005, 10:59 pm

FF (20041228) and memory usage on an XP 256mb install is crazy. I have the memory cache set to 5megs and over the course of an hour of browsing with multiple windows and tabs it uses 170megs of memory. This slows down the machine terribly. Disabling memory cache doesn't matter the least.

wrprice · Post by **wrprice** » January 9th, 2005, 12:27 am

If only I knew how to exact your words... *sigh*

No one's forcing you to use Firefox. Go. Live in peace.

mousky · Post by **mousky** » January 9th, 2005, 5:27 pm

The biggest problem with this and other memory threads is that people are using terms interchangeably. Someone uses the term "Memory Leak" one time to describe something that is NOT a memory leak and everybody starts referring to and using that term. Perceived high memory usage by FF is not necessarily a memory leak. It only becomes a memory leak when FF does not free up memory that it no longer needs when asked to.

More confusion is created when people refer to the "cache" which consists of a Memory cache device and a Disck cache device - which are two different things. Further complicating things is the information provided in about:config. People will see "Storage in use" and "Inactive Storage", add the two together thinking that "Inactive Storage" refers to unused storage (it doesn't) and in many cases the two do not add up to Maximum storage size. Even more confusion is abound when people start referring to Mem Usage, Peak Mem Usage and VM Size in Windows Task Manager.

To that end, "memory leak" bug or no bug, a FAQ on memory terms/usage as related to FF would be very useful to all users, power or novice.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » January 9th, 2005, 9:18 pm

daledude,
Since you actually experience the problem, you are very close to being able to provide some crucial answers. Most of us simply do not have the problem, so we can't reproduce it. I have tried hard with Win 98SE, NT, and XP.

The following message has been sent to a few of the many threads on this subject.

Some people have reported unstable behavior or even crashes. These are serious problems may be due to one or another cache exceeding its allotted disk space, but no one knows which one, if any. Someone who actually experiences a problem needs to provide the data during abnormal behavior.

Most problem reports read something lke this: "The memory cache/Windows cache/some othere cache grows without limit, and my computer slows down or stops." Or: "memory is never deallocated." The problem is, those things grow on my computers too, as they are supposed to when you fill them with data (they also shrink when appropriate), without causing any problem.

SChapel and I have shown steps we took to diagnose what was happening to memory. In my tests the Firefox memory cache and the Windows memory cache grew to truly gargantuan proportions because I stuffed FF with every large image I could find. All that memory was handled (AND deallocated) without ANY problem whatsoever. See http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... &start=105 , page 7. (Also see the message just before mine, from 'Guest'. That's me.

IF SOMEONE CAN PROVIDE SIMILAR INFORMATION WHEN A PROBLEM ACTUALLY OCCURS, MAYBE THEN WE WILL KNOW WHERE THE PROBLEM LIES.