The one and only "Memory usage" thread & FQA

User Help for Mozilla Firefox
Hendikins
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The one and only "Memory usage" thread & FQA

Post by Hendikins »

The FQA portion of this thread has been <a href="http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/faqs/memusage.html">moved to PluginDoc</a>.
Last edited by Hendikins on April 16th, 2006, 11:53 pm, edited 38 times in total.
carlosn
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Post by carlosn »

Wow, I get the first message after unlocking. Lucky me :)

It might help those of us that are not intimately familiar with the inner workings of Fx if some general guidelines of memory usage were posted.

For instance, after a day of running Fx, opening up PDFs, browsing, and just doing the things I like to do I'm at 82 MB, even with only one tab. From the discussion regarding heap usage and the like, this seems like a reasonable number. Is that true?
schapel
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Post by schapel »

My memory usage goes up to 200 MB on a regular basis (and goes back down around 100 MB too). I can get memory usage to go up about that high just by starting the browser and loading one of many different pages (Examples: <a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_mono/libc.html">1</a>, <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/welcome/">2</a>, <a href="http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=1980642">3</a>). It depends on what you're doing, but memory usage of about 200 MB or lower is commonplace. Most importantly, why bother with looking at a number that's nearly impossible to interpret if you're not experiencing any observable problems?
mastavic
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Post by mastavic »

carlosn wrote:Wow, I get the first message after unlocking. Lucky me :)

It might help those of us that are not intimately familiar with the inner workings of Fx if some general guidelines of memory usage were posted.

For instance, after a day of running Fx, opening up PDFs, browsing, and just doing the things I like to do I'm at 82 MB, even with only one tab. From the discussion regarding heap usage and the like, this seems like a reasonable number. Is that true?

In general, if I do the activities you mentioned, I am usually at about 120MB, which seems alright to me. It's just that about once every two days, my Firefox would shoot up to nearly 400MB after I have had it open for a long period of time.

-=Victor Ly
Guest
Guest

Post by Guest »

Hi.

I'm not sure if it's memory related, as I wouldn't really class my memory usage as bad, but maybe somebody can point me in the right direction.

When I am at work and working over a proxy, (which is not very fast), Fx tends to hang A LOT! The reason I'm posting this here is because I see there's a post above about slow loading pages that are JavaScript heavy. Try GMail? That practically hangs my browser for about 3 minutes.

Is there any logging or something that I can use to see what is causing this extremely slow response?

Or, is there somewhere else i can look. Like I mentioned, it can't be extension related because it does the same thing in safe mode. But it does seem to be network speed related, because I don't really have the issue at home, only at work. But, in my mind, Fx shouldn't hang, but rahter just sit and wait for a page to load.

thanks,
Guest
Guest

Post by Guest »

I like Firefox, but the issue of using so much memory has caused me to remove it. I have used "Other" tabbed browsers and they do not use near as much memory.
Firefox was growing to about 150 to 200 mb every time. Maybe there is a happy medium to fixing this or reducing it.

it is the Greatest browser !!
schapel
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Post by schapel »

Anonymous wrote:When I am at work and working over a proxy, (which is not very fast), Fx tends to hang A LOT! The reason I'm posting this here is because I see there's a post above about slow loading pages that are JavaScript heavy.

This thread really isn't the place to post a problem with Firefox hanging. Did you try the Knowledge Base (look on the right hand side of this page), specifically, <a href="http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_hangs">the page about Firefox hanging</a>?

Anonymous wrote:I like Firefox, but the issue of using so much memory has caused me to remove it. I have used "Other" tabbed browsers and they do not use near as much memory.
Firefox was growing to about 150 to 200 mb every time. Maybe there is a happy medium to fixing this or reducing it.

A lot of people, myself included, don't understand why some users are so concerned about a <i>number</i> that they would go so far as to change browsers. Could you satisfy our curiosity and explain what's so troubling about a number being higher than you like? If a number is your worst problem with a browser, it sounds to me like you've got a very trouble-free browser!
Guest
Guest

Post by Guest »

Hi, sometimes with the browser open for a few days...maybe a week, viewn lots of pages, pdfs, etc i get around 500-600MB even if I close all tabs and have only a blank page....is there a way to "clean" the memory? would a clear cache help here?
I don't care it using a lot of memory while it's realy using it...
schapel
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Post by schapel »

Anonymous wrote:Hi, sometimes with the browser open for a few days...maybe a week, viewn lots of pages, pdfs, etc i get around 500-600MB even if I close all tabs and have only a blank page....is there a way to "clean" the memory? would a clear cache help here?
I don't care it using a lot of memory while it's realy using it...

The amount of memory use (100s of extra MB) and the time (about a week) you've left the browser open is consistent with memory leaks. It sounds like you need to restart the browser to reclaim the lost memory. <a href="http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=380534">Session Manager</a> is an extension that will save your tabs so you can restart at any time without losing your place.
Guest
Guest

Post by Guest »

A lot of people, myself included, don't understand why some users are so concerned about a number that they would go so far as to change browsers. Could you satisfy our curiosity and explain what's so troubling about a number being higher than you like? If a number is your worst problem with a browser, it sounds to me like you've got a very trouble-free browser!


Sure if you have 4gb of Ram, but using 512mb and it uses 200 or 300 mbs it starts to lag and other things lag as well !! Why use an app that continually uses more memory than another app that stays 70% less ??
schapel
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Post by schapel »

Sure if you have 4gb of Ram, but using 512mb and it uses 200 or 300 mbs it starts to lag and other things lag as well !! Why use an app that continually uses more memory than another app that stays 70% less ??

When things are starting to lag, I can understand. The last time I saw that with Mozilla was late 2001 when it was leaking 2 MB of RAM every time you opened and closed a window. When I was using a laptop with 64 MB of RAM, things would start to get slow after visiting several links that opened new windows. I had no idea that Firefox would start slowing things down on a 512 MB computer by using only 200 MB. If you've found a browser that doesn't lag, great!

One thing to think about, though: What are your virtual memory settings? That might be what's really causing the lag.
Guest
Guest

Post by Guest »

What are your virtual memory settings?


1024
1024
schapel
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Post by schapel »

Anonymous wrote:
What are your virtual memory settings?


1024
1024

A paging file of 1024 MB sounds like plenty for a 512 MB computer. All I can say is enjoy your less-memory-hungry browser and newly speedy system!
eisei
Guest

Post by eisei »

hah
donutbandit
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Post by donutbandit »

Well, I can tell you something from my recent experience. I never had any problems with Firefox before I recently tried Windows XP. Under XP, I had all of the problems many users report here. Huge memory leaks, taking 15 seconds to load, crashing, etc. I saw it over 100 megs of memory on XP. I have reverted to Windows 2000 and Firefox is once more a joy to use.

I AM CONVINCED NOW THAT WINDOWS XP IS THE PROBLEM, NOT FIREFOX. Sorry for shouting, but that needed emphasis.

Is it possible that Uncle Billy had them write XP to make browsers other than IE unstable?
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