TB 3.1.2 using up nearly 1GB of memory!

[wsmwk]

Another thing to note, is that memory utilization only gets bad after scanning newsgroup accounts. These are all text-based newsgroups too, no binaries.

that puts a different light on things. perhaps item 8 of https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Te ... e_Problems - which cites newsgroups bugs - isn't worded well?

[tanstaafl]

Suggestions on how to resolve your concerns?

That wiki page is written for a technical user, and deals with both memory leak and performance problems (despite the title). I suggest you:

• Write a knowledge base article for Thunderbird (its written for a different type of audience, and its MUCH easier to get other people involved) that focuses on just memory leaks.
  
• Write it specifically for Windows users that have marginal computer skills, add a separate section for Linux/OSX users, and a advanced section that caters to technical users.
  
• Ideally provide an example where you explain why you were suspicious and how you tracked down a memory leak to an add-on. It wouldn't have to go into a lot of detail, just enough to help somebody relate better to the article.
  
• Provide more details on how to follow the procedure safely. For example, when telling somebody to temporarily disable their antivirus I'd tell them to set View -> Message Body As -> Plain text , make certain that View -> Display Attachments Inline is not checked, and don't click on any links or open an attachment while the anti-virus program is disabled. That might be obvious to you, but not providing information like that makes many users reluctant to try your process since they're not certain they know how to do that safely. Ditto for when you tell them to disable their firewall.
  
• Explicitly deal with all five types of indexing (Windows Integration, Gloda, offline folders, GDS and .msf files).
  
• Tell them to use "All Folders" to eliminate "Unified Folders" as a possibility. I'd be tempted to suggest deleting saved searches too to be thorough.
  
• Target it for the current version, and lose the history of all the fixed bugs. You could still link to the existing web page for anybody interested (in case of suspected regression bugs).

You could write it at support.mozillamessaging.com but you'll get much more participation if you do it here. Part of the problem is the current writeup is basically your private document since so few people can be bothered to also get a Mozilla wiki account. I've got an account there but stopped using it once I realized it was a waste of time commenting there (I'm not criticizing you - I've never commented on any of your web pages using that account)

[bbbl67]

Another thing to note, is that memory utilization only gets bad after scanning newsgroup accounts. These are all text-based newsgroups too, no binaries.

that puts a different light on things. perhaps item 8 of https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Te ... e_Problems - which cites newsgroups bugs - isn't worded well?

Well, I've upgraded to 8Gigs now, so I don't expect the problem will get much worse, as long as I keep using 32-bit Thunderbird. But anyways, the bug reports listed in that section do look similar to my problem.

[martinmurrayuk]

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?

No answer, Dan? Surely the 100k of memory you say TB is using (trivial, I agree) should really be 100Mb, a totally different matter.

[tboult]

I know its an older version of TB, but new versions did not help me and I prefer some add-ons (expression search) that don't work in newer versions.

I faced similar issues and found a few nuggets in the various replies that had me looking at potential causes. Its not really a leak as it was (for me) quickly up to 750MB of memory usage and then somewhat sable (but would jump beyond a GB on a regular basis). I found the steps at to https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Te ... e_Problems helpful and worked through them one at a time and measure the impacts. (I had disabled the global searching a long time ago, and don't use newgroups in thuderbird, many of the ideas here do not apply).

For me the killer was big folders. After reading about it and installing the foldersize add-on (not in the searchable list of add-ons, but on the memory_usage_problems page), and using it to identify (and the using move reduce folders that were above 2GB). In my case there were about 20 of them and at least 6 were very close to 4GB. After that cleaning my tbird as back to a far more reasonable 130MB of private storage.

YMMV, but of all the things I tried, this was both easy to do and far and away the most impact. Too bad it was #14 on their list of thing to check, as I examined many other things that did not help my machine performance.


MAC Book Pro, OS 10.6.4

[tanstaafl]

Many times you can get add-ons that only support older versions of Thunderbird to work using the techniques in http://kb.mozillazine.org/Updating_add-ons