I have a bunch of instances of the plugin-container process showing running in top. They're using a lot of CPU and killing my battery recently, which is how I noticed them, but I'm not too interested in the performance right now, I'm just trying to figure out why it is running at all.
As a test I've:
- Uninstalled all browser extensions
- Disabled/uninstalled all browser plugins, including Flash and OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco Systems, Inc.
- Unchecked "Play DRM-controlled content" in about:preferences
- Set my own extensions.blocklist.url in about:config to block all Firefox's built-in extensions (see an explanation of this at the bottom of this post if you're interested)
- Restarted Firefox in Safe Mode via "Help > Restart with Add-ons Disabled"
Anyone have any reasonable explanation for this, or an alternative source of the plugin-container instances?
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For anyone interested, a minor technical note on the `extensions.blocklist.url` setting. I've pointed this setting to my own server endpoint which returns the following XML file:
Code: Select all
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<blocklist xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/addons-blocklist" lastupdate="1532705151926">
<emItems>
<emItem id="activity-stream@mozilla.org.xpi"><prefs/><versionRange minVersion="0" maxVersion="*" severity="3"/></emItem>
<emItem id="firefox@getpocket.com.xpi"><prefs/><versionRange minVersion="0" maxVersion="*" severity="3"/></emItem>
<emItem id="formautofill@mozilla.org.xpi"><prefs/><versionRange minVersion="0" maxVersion="*" severity="3"/></emItem>
<emItem id="screenshots@mozilla.org.xpi"><prefs/><versionRange minVersion="0" maxVersion="*" severity="3"/></emItem>
<emItem id="webcompat@mozilla.org.xpi"><prefs/><versionRange minVersion="0" maxVersion="*" severity="3"/></emItem>
<emItem id="aushelper@mozilla.org.xpi"><prefs/><versionRange minVersion="0" maxVersion="*" severity="3"/></emItem>
<emItem id="followonsearch@mozilla.com.xpi"><prefs/><versionRange minVersion="0" maxVersion="*" severity="3"/></emItem>
<emItem id="onboarding@mozilla.org.xpi"><prefs/><versionRange minVersion="0" maxVersion="*" severity="3"/></emItem>
<emItem id="webcompat-reporter@mozilla.org.xpi"><prefs/><versionRange minVersion="0" maxVersion="*" severity="3"/></emItem>
</emItems>
</blocklist>