lag & beachballs in SM 2.49.4 (Mac)

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ppweb
Posts: 25
Joined: August 12th, 2017, 4:03 pm

lag & beachballs in SM 2.49.4 (Mac)

Post by ppweb »

This is a highly annoying bug, which I guess started with SM 2.4.

After approx. 2 to 3 days usage, SM 2.49.4 (Mac OS X El Capitan) starts to stall (mouse pointer turns to beachball) when inputting text, using the contextual menu, clicking links, going a page back or for, etc. basically any interactivity. Which makes browsing the Web a zen master challenge. The more days pass, the longer the wait. If I quit SM and delete the webappsstore.sqlite database, I'm back to speed again. Until 2-3 days later...

I've disabled all extensions except the default ones. The only plugins marked as 'always activate' are Shockwave Flash and Java. Default theme is used.

What could possibly caused this behavior?
frg
Posts: 1361
Joined: December 15th, 2015, 1:20 pm

Re: lag & beachballs in SM 2.49.4 (Mac)

Post by frg »

How are your cookies and Offline web applications settings?

If you don't use an ad and script blocker gunk will cumulate. Many tracking and ad sites will just add junk for tracking and annoying you. Also do you really need java? It has been a long time that I needed it and plugins other than Flash were more or less deprecated in 52 which 2.49 is based on. Mabe Mozilla took some code out.
ppweb
Posts: 25
Joined: August 12th, 2017, 4:03 pm

Re: lag & beachballs in SM 2.49.4 (Mac)

Post by ppweb »

Thanks. However, I can hardly imagine that Cookies could be responsible for this application lag. Else the programming code would be fundamentally flawed.

My User tracking settings are default. Cookies: accept cookies normally and allow cookies for the originating web site only.Offline Web content and User data: only allow with explicit permission & notify. My cookie list currently contains 2792 entries. I will trim the cookies via SQLiteManager to see if there is an impact.

I've set both Java and Flash plugins now to Ask to activate.
ppweb
Posts: 25
Joined: August 12th, 2017, 4:03 pm

Re: lag & beachballs in SM 2.49.4 (Mac)

Post by ppweb »

I've deleted around 1000 cookies and the following files: localstore.rdf, xulstore.json, webappsstore.sqlite. Will now check the next 2 days for any improvements.
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DanRaisch
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Re: lag & beachballs in SM 2.49.4 (Mac)

Post by DanRaisch »

Moving to SeaMonkey Support.
frg
Posts: 1361
Joined: December 15th, 2015, 1:20 pm

Re: lag & beachballs in SM 2.49.4 (Mac)

Post by frg »

The cookie preferences control the storage too. So if you enable third party cookies I am quite sure these sites can also use storage.
ppweb
Posts: 25
Joined: August 12th, 2017, 4:03 pm

Re: lag & beachballs in SM 2.49.4 (Mac)

Post by ppweb »

Third party cookies are not enabled and local storage is only used by a couple of my local LAN IP's.
ppweb
Posts: 25
Joined: August 12th, 2017, 4:03 pm

Re: lag & beachballs in SM 2.49.4 (Mac)

Post by ppweb »

No measurements so far have resolved the beachballing issue. Even clearing all Mac OS X caches and restarting the Mac Pro just provides the same initial speedup (normal state), but after two days SM starts to lag more and more.
frg
Posts: 1361
Joined: December 15th, 2015, 1:20 pm

Re: lag & beachballs in SM 2.49.4 (Mac)

Post by frg »

Well you can try the unoffical 2.49.5:

http://www.wg9s.com/comm-esr/

Built with a different compiler and including fixes scheduled for the next official release. I am using my mac Mini mostly for testing and on 10.14 right now. Have not encountered this. Which extensions do you use?
ppweb
Posts: 25
Joined: August 12th, 2017, 4:03 pm

Re: lag & beachballs in SM 2.49.4 (Mac)

Post by ppweb »

Thanks, will try 2.49.5 this week. I had disabled all extension except the standard Default Browser Helper. The others are set to activate only on request: AdobeAAMDetect, AdobeExManDetect, Flip4Mac Windows Media Plugin, Java Applet Plug-in, and Shockwave Flash.
ppweb
Posts: 25
Joined: August 12th, 2017, 4:03 pm

Re: lag & beachballs in SM 2.49.4 (Mac)

Post by ppweb »

I am using the unoffical 2.49.5 build since Monday. Today, after 4 days of semi-constant usage, SM is starting to lag/beachball again. So, this build is a small improvement but not the solution to the performance problems.

Could the culprit be the SQL database cache code (i.e. webappsstore.sqlite), which degrades fast when reaching a certain threshold of cashed Web surfing data? I could understand this with months old of cache data but not after just a few days.
ppweb
Posts: 25
Joined: August 12th, 2017, 4:03 pm

Re: lag & beachballs in SM 2.49.4 (Mac)

Post by ppweb »

There seems to be a Javascript/Ajax? bug - the Facebook Marketplace submit button to place ads is not responding anymore since 2.49.5. Used to work before and still works with Safari.
ppweb
Posts: 25
Joined: August 12th, 2017, 4:03 pm

Re: lag & beachballs in SM 2.49.4 (Mac)

Post by ppweb »

SM is also a resource hog on my machine - 1.62 GB wired memory after two days running! In comparison, Photoshop takes up 1.39 GB. A definite sign of poor programming.

Let's check what SM uses in terms of open files to find the culprit for such a high memory usage. And here's the likely cause: fonts.

SM blindly loads all fonts contained in /Library/Fonts/ - no less than 279 fonts! Worse, it also loads all non-Latin fonts such as the Korean Hannotate.ttc, which has a file size of 85.4 MB. Just loading the entire /Library/Fonts/ into memory results in a whopping 1.34 GB foot print! But why just stop here? Right, SM also slurps in the entire /System/Library/Fonts/, which is another 482 MB. Plus the user /Library/Fonts/. Then, for dessert, It also loads all the other fonts currently activated by the OS.

Is this the reason for the memory bloat?
ppweb
Posts: 25
Joined: August 12th, 2017, 4:03 pm

Re: lag & beachballs in SM 2.49.4 (Mac)

Post by ppweb »

Continuing my self dialogue, I discovered that SM (2.4.96) has a serious memory leak problem.

Fresh from startup, SM consumes approx. 600 to 800MB memory. After 3 days of frequent usage, the memory footprint is at a whopping 3.2GB!

In contrast, Chromium has been running for weeks with infrequent use and only takes 380MB plus 234MB by Chromium Helper.

This needs to be fixed.
frg
Posts: 1361
Joined: December 15th, 2015, 1:20 pm

Re: lag & beachballs in SM 2.49.4 (Mac)

Post by frg »

I am not seeing these problems on 10.14.1. Started with 10.12 and also didn't see them there. Also use NoScript (I use 5.1.9) and uBlock origin (I use 1.16.4.5) to block scripts and ads or you will generally be sorry and fight with bloat and slowdowns.
Try a new test profile. Might be add-on related.

While java still works in 2.49.5 it is deprecated and should be removed. Not aware of one site which still needs it. Flash is a pile of garbage and can very well cause excessive memory usage.

FRG
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