TB 3.1.2 using up nearly 1GB of memory!

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bbbl67
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TB 3.1.2 using up nearly 1GB of memory!

Post by bbbl67 »

A couple of days back I saw my computer was all of a sudden unresponsive. I fired up TaskMan, to see what was causing it: none of the CPU cores were very occupied, but there was a lot of disk thrashing going on. There wasn't anything particularly disk intensive in the background, so that was puzzling. Then I looked at the memory usage, and 3.9GB of my 4GB of RAM had been used up, this is on Windows 7 64-bit! Oh, so the disk thrashing was because of a whole lotta swapping going on. Even TaskMan didn't respond too well at this point, but I got it to sort the processes by memory utilization, and TB 3.1.2 immediately showed up as by far the largest perpetrator, it was using up a more than 800MB at the time. There were other processes also using a lot of memory, but none went over 200MB, so TB stood out like a sore thumb. As I'm typing this, TB is sitting in the background using up over 700MB right now.

I tried temporarily disabling add-ons and the like, but it didn't really make much of a difference. I think the memory usage seems to start going up when I'm downloading headers for newsgroups. And the memory utilization doesn't go down after all of the headers are in, either. Any idea what's going on?
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DanRaisch
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Re: TB 3.1.2 using up nearly 1GB of memory!

Post by DanRaisch »

Try switching off the Global Search and Indexing function. Find that under Tools->Options->Advanced->General tab->uncheck "Enable Global Search and Indexer".
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Diorser
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Re: TB 3.1.2 using up nearly 1GB of memory!

Post by Diorser »

Same kind of question.
I am currently using TB2, waiting for more maturity of TB3.
I've tried TB3.1.2, with "Global Search and Indexer" disabled (I would add .. of course).

TB3 is using twice the memory footprint of TB2, by just opening TB3 with the same mail data-base.

• Does it mean that TB3 is still under deep development, and that development or debug tools are embedded in the code, and then using the memory ?
• Is it due to gtk libraries with are quite old with poor performance ?
• Is it a known bug ?

Which release of TB3 is supposed to get the same performance level as TB2, i.e. same memory footprint for exactly same functionality ?

Thanks to clarify.
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DanRaisch
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Re: TB 3.1.2 using up nearly 1GB of memory!

Post by DanRaisch »

You'd have to ask the developers about the presence of development tools in the application but since 3.1.2 is an official release version I would doubt that is the case.

I have not seen any significant number of posts reporting "excessive" memory usage during regular use of Thunderbird version 3.1.2. There are some reports on this immediately after updating but it seems to be related to the creation of the initial global index and the memory numbers seem to drop after that indexing is completed.

Running on my system I see less than 100k of memory committed to Thunderbird 3.1.2 in Windows Task Manager. I can't speak to the numbers on a Linux system.
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Diorser
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Re: TB 3.1.2 using up nearly 1GB of memory!

Post by Diorser »

DanRaisch wrote:I have not seen any significant number of posts reporting "excessive" memory usage during regular use of Thunderbird version 3.1.2

People who already have migrated from TB2 to TB3 cannot compare anymore.
Those who still use TB2 can still compare by testing TB3.
For the moment, people are most focused on TB3 features, or trying to understand why TB3 and TB3.1 are maintained in parallel, trying to understand the difference etc etc.
But if you look a bit more around, you will find a lot of observations related to TB3 being a memory hog.

By the way, is there any TB development site or forum to discuss TB technical issues ?
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DanRaisch
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Re: TB 3.1.2 using up nearly 1GB of memory!

Post by DanRaisch »

Define "memory hog". I don't see 100k as representing hogging of anything. And there are enough posters questioning every aspect of the newer version to make me think that "excessive memory usage" (again, a term seeking a definition) would be overlooked by those posting on these forums.

Perhaps you'd be interested in this site -- http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/support/
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Diorser
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Re: TB 3.1.2 using up nearly 1GB of memory!

Post by Diorser »

"I don't see 100k as representing hogging of anything."

You don't see may be because you don't make it relative the the amount of RAM you have, and the amount of RAM you need for your applications, assuming you don't use TB only !
I made the comparison between TB2/TB3, and not with the RAM capacity, which means same condition, same features.
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DanRaisch
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Re: TB 3.1.2 using up nearly 1GB of memory!

Post by DanRaisch »

DanRaisch wrote:Define "memory hog".
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Diorser
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Re: TB 3.1.2 using up nearly 1GB of memory!

Post by Diorser »

Well, I understand this is not a development forum.
However, it seems quite easy to understand.
You have a PC with X MB of RAM.
If suddenly all your applications RAM occupation is multiplied by 2 for the same functionality (TB3/TB2 for example), you get in serious trouble. Your PC responsiveness will decrease, it will feel slower etc etc.
And you will downgrade to previous release of your applications, waiting for bug corrections.

By the way, what is the development site or forum for Thunderbird ?
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DanRaisch
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Re: TB 3.1.2 using up nearly 1GB of memory!

Post by DanRaisch »

You're rather overstating the case. If a computer with four gig of RAM suddenly finds an application demanding 100kb rather than 50 or 60kb there will be no performance hit that the user would be able to notice.

I posted a link to the Mozilla Messaging Support site above. Check that for links to any developer's sites they may identify.
Bozz
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Re: TB 3.1.2 using up nearly 1GB of memory!

Post by Bozz »

100K is nothing unless you have a seriously crippled computer with far to many applications running and only have 128MB memory. Yes, it could cause a problem in that situation but still it's unlikely that the majority of users would fall into that scenario and if they did, they should know better...or maybe not.
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Diorser
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Re: TB 3.1.2 using up nearly 1GB of memory!

Post by Diorser »

DanRaisch / "If a computer with four gig of RAM"

?? Why this assumption ?? Where did you read this ? Did you really understand the question ?
We are comparing TB3 versus TB2, for same functionality, same use, and not TB3 versus your RAM capacity, even if you have 50 GB of RAM, nobody cares !
A developer can understand this, believe me.
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DanRaisch
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Re: TB 3.1.2 using up nearly 1GB of memory!

Post by DanRaisch »

I did understand the question and I wasn't making any assumption. I was offering a hypothetical case. And you're still not answering the pertinent question. What difference does it make if TB3 uses more memory than TB2, as long as the total usage still falls within reasonable parameters? Are you debating the sophistication of the code or the impact on the system it's being run on. If the former you may have a point. If the latter, I feel you're finding a problem where one doesn't exist.
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Diorser
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Re: TB 3.1.2 using up nearly 1GB of memory!

Post by Diorser »

DanRaisch wrote: I was offering a hypothetical case.
.../... still falls within" reasonable" parameters?

How do you define "reasonable parameters". Do you mean it is reasonable to have 4GB RAM in a PC (your assumption) or 10 GB ?
Making this kind of assumptions is just ridiculous especially for comparing TB3 versus TB2.
Ok, you are not a developer, understood, but hard to believe you don't understand. I summarize, or clarify, I don't know:
If you have a PC X with Y RAM capacity, doubling all programs RAM occupations is equivalent to say: my PC is worse than before, slower, less reactive etc etc...
I really don't catch what is hard to understand, if you keep in mind that usually, TB is not the only program running on a PC, and that it can stays quite a long time running in the background, just doing nothing, but occupying memory, then just stealing memory to other programs.

For same functionality and same usage (i.e. just opening TB, and doing nothing more), increasing memory requirement of a program cannot be qualified as an improvement.
As simple as that.
martinmurrayuk
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Re: TB 3.1.2 using up nearly 1GB of memory!

Post by martinmurrayuk »

DanRaisch wrote:Running on my system I see less than 100k of memory committed to Thunderbird 3.1.2 in Windows Task Manager. I can't speak to the numbers on a Linux system.


100K??!!! I can't believe we're talking the same numbers here. On my ancient laptop with only 512Mb (yes that's Mb) of memory, Task Manager tells me that TB3.1.2 is using 64,000K (that's 64Mb) of memory. And the total memory usage is 372Mb, though I've got only Thunderbird and Internet Explorer open. The original poster (bbbl67) complained that TB was using 3.96Gb of his 4Gb. So how come your TB is using so little memory, and ours are using so much?
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