Firefox People! Memory leak fix....finally!

[warcrow]

This guy figured it out.

Yay, worked for me.

 

[suklee]

How do you tell you have the memory leak in the first place?

 

[screw3d]

Any official word from Mozilla?

 

[Soccer55]

I've been wondering if it was just my setup or if this was an actual Firefox issue.....thanks warcrow

-Tom

 

[igowerf]

So the leak is actually in the plug-in?

 

[screw3d]

It's technically not a leak, and I think this fix just caps the max memory consumption..

 

[BW86]

ah, very nice :thumbsup:

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Kai920
How do you tell you have the memory leak in the first place?

If the memory an application uses is not returned to the OS when it exits, I believe it's a leak. If there's a memory leak, this hack won't fix it.

 

[Nothinman]

If the memory an application uses is not returned to the OS when it exits, I believe it's a leak. If there's a memory leak, this hack won't fix it.

A memory leak is just an app not freeing a portion of memory during it's life. For instance, if your web browser allocated X amount of memory every time you opened a new tab (say for things like the tab position, label, etc) and didn't free or reuse the memory when you closed the tab that portion of memory would be considered leaked. But once you killed the browser the memory would be freed up, if it wasn't that would be a bug in the kernel or C library, once the app exits all of it's resources are freed no matter how bad the app leaked when it ran.

Oh and the 'fix' listed on the linked page is more of a bandaid than a real fix. All he's doing is putting a limit on how much memory FF will allow itself to use and if that really fixes the issue then this isn't a real memory leak because FF is still keeping track of all of the memory it's allocating, if it was leaked it wouldn't be able to account for the lost pages and the process would still end up using more than the max.

 

[igowerf]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: Kai920
How do you tell you have the memory leak in the first place?

If the memory an application uses is not returned to the OS when it exits, I believe it's a leak. If there's a memory leak, this hack won't fix it.

That's what I was thinking. If Firefox can control the leak by simply setting a limit, then it's not really a leak.

 

[Kasper4christ]

but it still sure helps..

 

[Nothinman]

but it still sure helps..

If the muffler on your car comes loose you can secure it again with a hanger if you'd like and it'll help, but it's not the right fix.

 

[znaps]

It is a leak, and this isn't a fix - it's somewhat of a temporary workaround.

 

[computeerrgghh]

If its flash related, I wonder if the flashblock extension would help. I personally have never had a leak but I use flashblock, so I usually don't see annoying flash stuff anyway.

 

[sciencewhiz]

Originally posted by: znaps
It is a leak, and this isn't a fix - it's somewhat of a temporary workaround.

What makes it a leak?

 

[Lonyo]

It's like plugging a leak with a temp measure, but since it probably works, it is pretty much a fix, just not the most elegant one, and one that could most certainly be bettered or improved in intself.

 

[znaps]

Originally posted by: sciencewhiz

Originally posted by: znaps
It is a leak, and this isn't a fix - it's somewhat of a temporary workaround.

What makes it a leak?

Memory usage goes up with length of time the app is running, and doesn't come down again. That's what a memory leak is.

 

[sciencewhiz]

Originally posted by: znaps

Originally posted by: sciencewhiz

Originally posted by: znaps
It is a leak, and this isn't a fix - it's somewhat of a temporary workaround.

What makes it a leak?

Memory usage goes up with length of time the app is running, and doesn't come down again. That's what a memory leak is.

Your definition is only partially correct. See Nothinman's definition earlier in the thread.

Do you still have free memory? Use up more then your availible free memory and see if firefox gives up some of it's memory cache. If it does, it's not a memory leak. The cache may seem like a leak, and has many of the characteristics, but it will give it up when needed.

 

[znaps]

Nothinman's definition is not mine. If your app consumes memory where it shouldn't be, it's a memory leak. Look it up if you like, and check Firefox's BugZilla DB - Firefox has plenty of mem leaks other than the Flash one.

From Wikipedia:

"Memory leaks are often thought of as failures to release unused memory by a computer program. <b>Strictly speaking, it is just unnecessary memory consumption.</b>"

 

[Nothinman]

Memory usage goes up with length of time the app is running, and doesn't come down again. That's what a memory leak is.

Maybe, depends on what the app is supposed to do.

 

[sciencewhiz]

Originally posted by: znaps

From Wikipedia:

"Memory leaks are often thought of as failures to release unused memory by a computer program. <b>Strictly speaking, it is just unnecessary memory consumption.</b>"

Memory used as cache isn't unused and thus doesn't meet that definition.

 

[tami]

this isn't working for me. my limit is at 60mb and it's using 104mb of RAM. i restarted FF. i don't see it doing anything special.

 

[RMBear]

All this leaking - gotta go to the toilet...

 

[HN]

set it at 60000.
browsed around the square-enix ff7 movie site. memory usage went to around 75000. not sure what that setting is supposed to do.

 

[Unkno]

The best fix currently for the memory leak is to just minimize your browser once in a while.