Major Problem with Firefox

User Help for Mozilla Firefox
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mightyglydd
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by mightyglydd »

dmcmillen wrote: Also, if I create a new profile,

Five pages. over two weeks and you STILL haven't done that! ](*,)

@Grumpus: Your Tinfoil Blog's here.. http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=22
#KeepFightingMichael and Alex.
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DanRaisch
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by DanRaisch »

dmcmillen wrote:Also, if I create a new profile, could you please tell me what files to copy over to the new profile to get my bookmarks, settings, add-ons, browser history, etc in the new profile.
Let's be clear that, initially, the new profile is to be used without any elements of the old. That is the only way to see if a basic Firefox installation is displaying any of the issues that were found previously.
Once the user is satisfied that a new profile is not showing problems, selected data can be migrated into it from the old -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_ ... _-_Firefox
It's much better to install any desired extensions directly from their sources than to try to migrate them from the old profile. That both ensures that the latest version is being used and that any installation problems or settings modifications that could have caused problems in the old profile are eliminated.
dmcmillen
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by dmcmillen »

Let's be clear that, initially, the new profile is to be used without any elements of the old. That is the only way to see if a basic Firefox installation is displaying any of the issues that were found previously.
Dan, I understand the testing issues. I was wanting my bookmarks so I could continue working while testing without having to jump back and forth between profiles. Many of the sites that I had up when I last had the problem are saved in my bookmarks. I guess would be better to save them to a file from current profile and import to the new profile. It would be different if I was able to reliably reproduce the problem and test that in a different profile.
Five pages. over two weeks and you STILL haven't done that! ]
mightyglydd, it's of no help to be so confrontational. That style might serve you in other environments, but your input is not providing anything useful to this conversation I would appreciate you not providing any more input in this thread.
Last edited by dmcmillen on April 5th, 2018, 2:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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RobertJ
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by RobertJ »

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dmcmillen, you can copy your bookmarks/favicons by copying these two files into the test profile

places.sqlite and favicons.sqlite

with FF not running.

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FF 92.0 - TB 78.13 - Mac OSX 10.13.6
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Frank Lion
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by Frank Lion »

dmcmillen wrote:... but your input is not providing anything useful to this conversation
Well, it is providing me with a pretty accurate summation of the 5 pages of this thread, for a start.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)
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LIMPET235
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by LIMPET235 »

@ dmcmillen...
You said that you have 16 Gig of RAM.
Have you done a memory test/check yet?
> http://www.memtest.org/

&, please, just create a new, blank Profile as suggested numerous times & just transfer your Bookmarks
over to it using the supplied links.

There's no need to have to....".......go back & forth between Profiles."

(On a strictly personal note....I really feel like locking this thread.)

Takes about 4 or 5 Minutes to complete.
[Ancient Amateur Astronomer.]
Win-10-H/64 bit/500G SSD/16 Gig Ram/450Watt PSU/350WattUPS/Firefox-115.0.2/T-bird-115.3.2./SnagIt-v10.0.1/MWP-7.12.125.

(Always choose the "Custom" Install.)
dmcmillen
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by dmcmillen »

Thanks LIMPET235. I will create a new profile and test there and report results. I do appreciate everyone's input and would like to get to the bottom of this problem.
(On a strictly personal note....I really feel like locking this thread.)
Can't say that I blame you. I have been in the business for over 40 years and been on a more than a few forums in a variety of trades and businesses and this thread has been one the oddest. As a brewer I spend a lot of time on brewing forums getting problems solved and helping solve problems and in all that time I have never seen a thread where I have seen the kind of confrontational and demeaning behaviour that I have seen in this thread. For the most part, brewers have a healthy respect for each other and recognize how complex brewing is. But most of all there is respect and understanding that each person has a a different level of knowledge and experience. We know that at one time each of has been there and there would be nothing gained by belittling that person for their lack of knowledge or understanding or belittling another person for providing an answer that is clearly not correct or not within the normal frame of experience. We understand that the purpose of the forum is to help people.
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RobertJ
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by RobertJ »

dmcmillen wrote:Thanks LIMPET235. I will create a new profile and test there and report results. I do appreciate everyone's input and would like to get to the bottom of this problem.
DanRaisch suggested that two days ago!
(On a strictly personal note....I really feel like locking this thread.)
dmcmillen wrote:Can't say that I blame you.
Actually you are the issue for the most part. Normal debugging involves 1) testing in FF safe mode and 2) trying a new profile which DanRaisch suggested as noted above two days ago.

This forum has many personalities and communicate in different ways. Deal with it.

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FF 92.0 - TB 78.13 - Mac OSX 10.13.6
Eldkatten
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by Eldkatten »

Hello,

as it seems, I have solved the issue. I did this:
According to the knowledge base article "Reducing memory usage - Firefox":
- browser.cache.memory.capacity = 0
- browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers = 0
- image.mem.min_discard_timeout_ms (I had to add this) = 2000 (2 s)

Furthermore I did this (thanks to flamewolf393 in http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... &t=3039691 )
Toggle the about:config Pref, browser.tabs.remote.autostart, to 'false'.
This was to switch off the multithreading, I think it's just cosmetic, but I just like it better that way.

Memory consumption is now within reasonable limits, and when it gets high, it reduces itself again after half a minute or so. And when I close Firefox, it shuts down within seconds, freeing all occupied memory immediately, not taking minutes and tons of harddrive activity, like dmcmillen and I observed before.

Oh, and all (three) plugins activated again, with no negative effect.

So, thanks for that knowledge base document, it helped.
It didn't help the sligthest bit, though, to be yelled at and insulted, both with words and emoticons.
And it didn't help the slightest bit to be whined at and nugded about "Use a new profile!". Yes, I did that, but it didn't provide any information of any value.
RobertJ wrote:This forum has many personalities and communicate in different ways. Deal with it.
No, RobertJ, there you are wrong: I don't have to deal with it. I can just leave. Don't bother to block me, I won't get back here anyway. I prefer to communicate in a adult way at eye level, and my 20 years experiance in technical and software development proves me right; customers, coworkers and suppliers of mine obviously see it the same way. Given they are mature persons, that is, who don't need to show off and just give freely of their knowledge and benefit from other's knowledge, which is in return given with good grace.

So, if you feel you have to live with a way of speaking with or rather to each other in the way that seems to be shown exemplary in this thread, it's your problem. I hope you (all) finally find peace.
Kind regards
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RobertJ
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by RobertJ »

Eldkatten wrote:No, RobertJ, there you are wrong: I don't have to deal with it. I can just leave.
Image

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FF 92.0 - TB 78.13 - Mac OSX 10.13.6
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DanRaisch
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by DanRaisch »

Annnnd, CUT. Locking this before it goes more pear shaped.

Temporarily unlocked - 4/11/18
dmcmillen
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by dmcmillen »

Quick summary: Win 7, 64 bit Home Edition, 16GB memory (everything current), FF Quantum 59.0.2
Problem: Runaway FF memory consumption which if left unchecked, will crash FF with a inability to allocate memory error.
Changes made since the problem was originally reported: NVIDIA driver was upgraded to the latest driver

Ok, after 3 days of testing here are my findings:
- Thread memory usage was was observed in the Win 7 Resource Monitor

- I cannot reliably reproduce the problem. One time the memory will take off and the next time opening the same tabs will not. Day 1 of testing I was able to reproduce and then day 2 I could not reproduce at all and day 3 I was able to reproduce

- Problem "appears" to be related to high memory activity observed in the Network Cache Storage Service (about:cache?device=memory). High activity here (Number of entries) always parallels high memory consumption, although the actual memory consumption by the main firefox.exe thread far exceeds the browser.cache.memory.capacity which in my default profile is only 65536 kib and 1/2 that in the test profile. I would think that these entries are driven by activity within tabs.

- Problem is not Profile dependent. I am able to reproduce in default profile (with or without add-ons) and the newly created test profile (no addons). (Adblock Plus, Print Edit WE, and Video Download Helper)

- Problem is not dependent on multi-threading or single threading. Occurs in both.

- Ususally in the multi-threaded environment, while there is some memory growth in all the threads, 99% of the growth is in one thread. That said I once observed high growth in a 2nd thread. I suspect this is dependent on the number of tabs.

- Used memory in the system without FF running is about 3.2GB

- This morning, I loaded my basic 6 tabs into the test profile and immediately watched the main firefox.exe thread go from 173mb to over 9gb in the course of about 15 mins before I killed the tabs and and watched mem drop to 3.8gb before I killed FF. Please note that on day 1 memory stayed in reasonable range with these 6 tabs; I had to load another "suspect" tab to get it to take off.

- I then tested the same tabs in a single thread environment and memory held steady this time until I loaded my "suspect" tab. Memory still held steady until I loaded 3 more "suspect" tabs and it then took off. I cut it off after it reached 7.5gb.

- FF does not always release memory after killing tabs. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. Only way to reliably release memory is to kill FF

- Even when FF does not have a mem runaway, it is quite a memory hog. To have FF open with one Google tab, it is consuming about 1 - 1.5gb. Of course, that could be based on the amount of memory I have in my system (16gb)

- To test in a single thread environment while reducing memory (note FF starts with 2 threads initially and then drops one later) I followed the information in the Reducing Memory Usage article. Note that in the default profile, I was unable to change browser.cache.memory.capacity to 0 or any other amount. It always came back to 65536. The variable does not exist in the test profile, but shows to be 32768 in the Network Cache Storage Information.

- Bottom line at this time I am no closer to cause and effect here. I only know that it will occur, just don't know when or what will trigger it. Too may varialbles.
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RobertJ
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by RobertJ »

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Currently running FF59.0.2 on macOS 10.13.4 with 8G of RAM. Have 9 tabs open and 11 extensions. Memory use is about 1G and stable. Have NEVER seen the kind of issues cited above.

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FF 92.0 - TB 78.13 - Mac OSX 10.13.6
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DanRaisch
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by DanRaisch »

Currently running FF59.0.2 on Win 10 with 8G of RAM, 6 tabs open and 4 extensions. Memory use is about 1.2G. I haven't noted any instability in any of the last several versions.
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Frank Lion
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Re: Major Problem with Firefox

Post by Frank Lion »

Currently running FF60.0b10 on Win 7 with 8G of RAM, 12 tabs open, one Complete Theme and 1 extension. Memory use is about 495MB.

The RAM usage is lower than most due to my about:config changes.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)
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