Does anyone else have a huge memory leak in Firefox 1.5?

[RaynorWolfcastle]

I noticed that my web browsing was getting a little sluggish today after upgrading to Firefox 1.5 so I opened up task manager. With two tabs open, Firefox was using no less than 400 MB of memory! WTF?!

I'm using the same extensions as I did under Firefox 1.07: Gmail manager, Forecastfox, Adblock, IE View, All-in-one Gestures, BugMeNot.

Is anyone else having this problem? Is there a known solution?

UPDATE: possible culprits?
- I've narrowed down the memory hogging problem to one of two extensions (which used to work fine): either Gmail manager or Forcast Fox has a gaping hole.

- I've also figured out that Firefox 1.5 has BIG problems with embedded Windows Media content. It crashes almost every time I play embedded WMV clips, this occurred even when all extensions were disabled.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Nope,

20mb here

 

[phaxmohdem]

Right now I've got three FF 1.5 Browswer sindows open using ~90MB RAM. 1.07 I had the same sometimes 300-400MB of RAM if I had a crazy number of browsers open. It does seem aweful high for 3 windwos though, Perhaps there some Mad caching going on in the background.

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Single Tab with ATOT open at the moment, 122 MB

 

[Nithin]

i'm seeing this too. lot more with 1.5 than with 1.0.7.

 

[screw3d]

Memory use != memory leak. If you close the browser, memory is released. I'm not saying that it's a good thing though.

 

[xtknight]

If the memory was really being leaked wouldn't it not show up under firefox.exe? Not to say it isn't using a bunch...

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

Originally posted by: screw3d
Memory use != memory leak. If you close the browser, memory is released. I'm not saying that it's a good thing though.

Whatever it is, it's not normal. Firefox starts up with a ~30ish MB memory footpring and slowly bloats up to several hundred MB over time. This is not normal behviour, it probably means it's not cleaning up after itself properly as windows and tabs are opened and closed.

 

[Markbnj]

Memory use != memory leak. If you close the browser, memory is released. I'm not saying that it's a good thing though.

Do you mean close the app, or just that tab? Closing the app will free any memory, leaked or otherwise, except for certain special cases. If it disappears when closing the browser tab then yeah, it isn't a leak in the classic sense, but probably still a bug.

 

[microAmp]

It uses your RAM as a cache. At least from what the respones are to these type of post.

 

[Anton74]

At the same time I installed 1.5, I also for the first time installed Ad-Block. Memory use was immediately much higher than with 1.0.7, starting at ~100MB and steadily bloating (I'd close FF at around 200MB, so I don't know how bad it would eventually get if I didn't).

I found after some experimentation with extensions that removing Ad-Block would improve this a lot - now FF is using in the ~70-100MB range (1 window, ~15 tabs), and not really bloating much beyond that point - so far at least. Something to think about. This is still worse than what it used to be with 1.0.7 though.

Too bad really, because I much liked Ad-Block - I might try Ad-Block Plus instead. In the meantime, it's back to filtering with DansGuardian, and blocking flash content.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Remove all those crappy extensions and report back. I've got 9 tabs open and I'm only using 88MB according to task manager. I've been opening and closing busy tabs for a while too.

Limit your cache a more too.

 

[Anton74]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Remove all those crappy extensions and report back. I've got 9 tabs open and I'm only using 88MB according to task manager. I've been opening and closing busy tabs for a while too.

I've experimented with this, and disabled the ones I can miss already. Like I said, I got a substantial improvement when I disabled Ad-Block (no others were disabled at the same time).

After average activity spanned over a large portion of the day (17 tabs open now, plus this reply window), memory usage is reported at 61M, and VM size for FF is 103MB. (Can someone explain that to me btw? There is no swap file.)

Limit your cache a more too.

Gladly (I'm caching with Squid anyway) - but where's this setting now? I can only find options for disk cache size, and whether or not to use memory cache at all, in about:config.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Anton74

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Remove all those crappy extensions and report back. I've got 9 tabs open and I'm only using 88MB according to task manager. I've been opening and closing busy tabs for a while too.

I've experimented with this, and disabled the ones I can miss already. Like I said, I got a substantial improvement when I disabled Ad-Block (no others were disabled at the same time).

After average activity spanned over a large portion of the day (17 tabs open now, plus this reply window), memory usage is reported at 61M, and VM size for FF is 103MB. (Can someone explain that to me btw? There is no swap file.)

Limit your cache a more too.

Gladly (I'm caching with Squid anyway) - but where's this setting now? I can only find options for disk cache size, and whether or not to use memory cache at all, in about:config.

Maybe "browser.cache.memory.enable" in about:config?

EDIT: Oops, forgot to ask: So it appears that your extensions are eating a heck of a lot of the used RAM?

 

[bersl2]

Everyone should probably check memory usage with and without Flash installed. Flash and Firefox are notorious for not playing well together w.r.t. memory.

 

[IdioticBuffoon]

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle
I noticed that my web browsing was getting a little sluggish today after upgrading to Firefox 1.5 so I opened up task manager. With two tabs open, Firefox was using no less than 400 MB of memory! WTF?!

I'm using the same extensions as I did under Firefox 1.07: Gmail manager, Forecastfox, Adblock, IE View, All-in-one Gestures, BugMeNot.

Is anyone else having this problem? Is there a known solution?

Yes! I was about to make a thread on this too. Right now I have 3 tabs with 175mb !!! This didn't happen with previous versions of firefox but just started 3 days ago when I upgraded to 1.5.

I also think the problem is that it is not cleaning up after tabs are closed. Because I HAVE gone over 400mb with around 15 tabs (even after they were closed).

Any fix for this? Have Mozilla even recognized this problem?

 

[secretanchitman]

lol i made this post on OT a while back. i have 1 tab open (AT) and its using 100MB...

and i have only 512MB in dual-channel, so its even worse...what i did to kinda slow down the usage, is COMPLETELY uninstall firefox. and reinstall the extensions one by one and see if that is the problem. so far i got it down from 275MB to 100ish...dumb redirect remover extension screwing me up!

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: secretanchitman
lol i made this post on OT a while back. i have 1 tab open (AT) and its using 100MB...

and i have only 512MB in dual-channel, so its even worse...what i did to kinda slow down the usage, is COMPLETELY uninstall firefox. and reinstall the extensions one by one and see if that is the problem. so far i got it down from 275MB to 100ish...dumb redirect remover extension screwing me up!

How much memory was it using without any extensions?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: IdioticBuffoon

Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle
I noticed that my web browsing was getting a little sluggish today after upgrading to Firefox 1.5 so I opened up task manager. With two tabs open, Firefox was using no less than 400 MB of memory! WTF?!

I'm using the same extensions as I did under Firefox 1.07: Gmail manager, Forecastfox, Adblock, IE View, All-in-one Gestures, BugMeNot.

Is anyone else having this problem? Is there a known solution?

Yes! I was about to make a thread on this too. Right now I have 3 tabs with 175mb !!! This didn't happen with previous versions of firefox but just started 3 days ago when I upgraded to 1.5.

I also think the problem is that it is not cleaning up after tabs are closed. Because I HAVE gone over 400mb with around 15 tabs (even after they were closed).

Any fix for this? Have Mozilla even recognized this problem?

Neither of the two people that use firefox noticed a problem. :roll:

Have you checked the bug database? Have you filled out a bug report? If you do, I hope you decide to include more information thatn this... :shocked:

 

[Anton74]

Maybe "browser.cache.memory.enable" in about:config?

I did find that switch, it appears to toggle RAM caching on or off - I did not notice any obvious difference in either memory usage or performance either way.

EDIT: Oops, forgot to ask: So it appears that your extensions are eating a heck of a lot of the used RAM?

Well, not exactly. I've done some quick'n'dirty tests, and came up with these numbers (did 3 runs each, there seems to be some more or less random variance):

- all extensions disabled, manual loading of 21 tabs (all at once from bookmarks): mem usage / VM size 73M/66M, then 68/52, then 68/61
- all extensions disabled, no pages loaded: 17/9, then 16/9, then 16/9 (loading only this forum page after that: 25/18)
- SessionSaver Enabled, same 21 tabs auto-loaded: 74/60, then 73/66, then 75/60
- Talkback, Forecastfox, Autocopy, Paste and Go, Web Search Plus, LastTab, IE VIew, ReloadEvery, Tabbrowser Preferences, SessionSaver, Googlebar Lite enabled, 21 tabs auto-loaded: 77/70, then 78/63, then 77/70
- Same, with AdBlock added: 79/65, then 78/72, then 79/64

So really, it appears that upon startup, the vast majority of memory is taken up by the tabs/pages, followed by the base program, and only a couple of megs by the extensions. Even AdBlock, which I thought contributed a lot to memory usage, was very well behaved in this initial test. Note however that the extensions are only disabled, not uninstalled, but that should make no difference I assume.

Apparently over time, memory usage goes up a lot. It would take some more extended testing to see if any extensions may contribute to that, and how much. I've left all the extensions disabled for now, and I'll see if I can keep this thing open for a while and see what happens then. After that, if I get around to it, I'll do the same with 1 or more extensions to narrow down which one might be misbehaving (Adblock is still suspect).

Anton

 

[abaez]

This is funny, if this were any other browser people would be crucifying it. For some reason because this is firefox everyone is so patient.

 

[Anton74]

One day later now, memory usage is 41MB, VM size is 32M, with 2 tabs open (still no extensions loaded). There's hardly been any browsing activity in that time though. Still acceptable so far I'd say.

Also, opening those same 21 tabs in Mozilla 1.7.12 results in memory usage of 84MB, and a VM size of 73MB, or ~10 MB's more than FF (see earlier post). Initial memory usage with no pages loaded was just about the same as FF.

You know what I just realized - I can't remember ever having close to even as much as 10 browser windows open at a time, let alone 20, when there was no tabbed browsing, it's just too much clutter in the taskbar. Maybe we've gotten spoiled by Mozilla/Firefox, and are now wondering why memory usage is high when we've got 10 or 20 tabs open... (But something is clearly amiss, when it bloats over time to several hundred MB, especially with few tabs open.)

More later.

Anton

 

[IdioticBuffoon]

Originally posted by: Anton74
But something is clearly amiss, when it bloats over time to several hundred MB, especially with few tabs open.

Hmm. It seems that a lot more people have discovered this since FF 1.5's release. Like here.

 

[CTho9305]

Firefox definitely does have leaks. I don't think you'd find any developers who would deny that. A developer would also tell you that it's not "a" memory leak, it's "lots of" memory leaks. Users who deny it are either fanboys, lucky, or don't leave it open for many days. The rabid fanboy hype machine does a good job of screaming at anyone who does mention leaks enough that they go away. Note that (in my personal experience, and based on discussions with other competent users) using tabs seems worse than using windows for everything leak-wise.

Changing prefs related to cache size isn't going to do squat. Most people who tell you to set it to some "small" value are actually picking values much larger than what the app picks itself by default (it uses a sliding scale based on how much ram you have - for most normal RAM sizes it picks well under 32MB).

Have you checked the bug database? Have you filled out a bug report? If you do, I hope you decide to include more information thatn this...

I don't think anyone really wants more memory leak bug reports like the ones we have - 99% are from idiotic users who think memory usage = memory leaking, and 99% of the remaining 1% can't figure out how to provide useful info.

 

[Nothinman]

After average activity spanned over a large portion of the day (17 tabs open now, plus this reply window), memory usage is reported at 61M, and VM size for FF is 103MB. (Can someone explain that to me btw? There is no swap file.)

Whether you have a pagefile or not is irrelevant, VM is not equivalent to pagefile usage.

For some reason because this is firefox everyone is so patient.

Probably because no other browser can compete with it's functionality provided by all of the different extensions available and since FF is an OSS project it's a community project, essentially anyone with the time, willingness and knowledge can contribute.