Failfox memory leaks

J

Jospeh

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 29, 2008
Messages
1,885
Well, I'm not too pleased about failfox reaching 1 GB of memory usage after using it for about a two days without closing. Also, it gets up to 500MBs pretty quick. Is there any way to fix this? If not, is there a browser that doesn't leak like hell?
 
I just had 3.5 running earlier in Windows 7 x86 7260 with 291 tabs (seriously), and each tab had a gallery image in it from some code I'm working on, JPG images, roughly 500x800 in size, with the code necessary to display the gallery pages too. Firefox - because "Failfox" is just too retarded - barely cracked 750MB of usage after 4 hours sitting there with those tabs loaded, all 291 of 'em.

When I was done, I right clicked on the 1st tab and chose "Close other tabs" (since I use Tab Mix Plus FTW!!!), after 11 seconds or so there was only one tab left; RAM usage dropped back down to the sub-100 range where it normally sits with just one tab.

You do realize that displaying content requires memory, right? Load up 10 tabs of content and it's gotta be sitting in RAM someplace... I mean, you do get that aspect, right?

As for "leaks," I haven't noticed any. Currently back at one tab (this one where I'm responding), with the same instance of Firefox 3.5, sitting at 90216K (~91MB), that I've had running since I booted this computer Friday around 4:30PM Pacific time...

I do know they're fast tracking the "bugs" that supposedly exist in Firefox 3.5 at this point for a hasty 3.5.1 release, but honestly, I haven't seen or had issue with any. If they exist, they don't bother me.
 
I know it takes memory to display stuff. But I'll have maybe 10 tabs still open and 500 MBs of usage after awhile. I hit 1GB with about 10-20 tabs. That's gotta be a memory leak.
 
I have a "core" of about 10 tabs I keep open in 3.5 - [H], RSS, news, dictionary, other stuff. My current window has been up for about 24 hours and is just peeking past 400k.

I'd take a look at what extensions you have installed. Did you do a clean install? I mean, did you delete your profile, uninstall, and then reinstall the newest FF? Have you tweaked anything in about:config?
 
If 9 people running Firefox 3.5 say it works and has no memory leaks for them on their particular software configs and 1 person rolls up and says it sucks and has leaks, I'd attribute it to some particular "thing" on that 1 person's software config.

That kind of troubleshooting will drive you nuckin' futs, fast... :)

All I know is I see more positive reports about Firefox than negative ones, not much there is. Some people just have that particular setup that just never seems to work right... could be luck, could be something else, who the hell knows...
 
Just close the darn thing. Restore session works nice as well and it starts quick if you are using Vista/Win7 which will cache the files.

Leaving any program open for long periods is just asking for it IMO. Though IE is not too bad about it when I leave my email open for days on end.
 
It doesn't necessarily have to be a leak. Clicking a lot of sites on each tab can cache a lot of stuff. There's probably not much you can do except turn off caching and/or wait for the 1 process per tab work to be finished in a future version (and then close tabs instead of reusing them). I don't know if these instructions still work if you want to disable caching: http://www.davidtan.org/tips-reduce-firefox-memory-cache-usage/

I have to call shens on FF3.5 using only 400kb with 10 tabs open. Even a freshly launched FF 3.5 with the plain www.google.com as the home page and *zero* addons installed, all plugins disabled and a freshly created profile (just to make sure everything is empty) uses over 20MB just loaded and starts growing to 27-39MB without doing anything. Maybe you meant 400MB.
 
About: cache

Number of entries: 75
Maximum storage size: 30720 KiB
Storage in use: 214 KiB
Inactive storage: 214 KiB

List Cache Entries
Disk cache device

Number of entries: 1645
Maximum storage size: 51200 KiB
Storage in use: 50773 KiB
Cache Directory: E:\Users\....

List Cache Entries
Offline cache device

Number of entries: 0
Maximum storage size: 512000 KiB
Storage in use: 0 KiB
Cache Directory: E:\Users\.....

Firefox is currently using 262 MBs of memory(down from ~295MB for 10 or so tabs) and I am typing on the only tab open.
 
Joe Average - close other tabs is a native feature in 3.5. Not saying you should give up tabmix plus, just pointing that out :)

As for memory leaks - I hear people making that claim about Firefox a lot but the circumstances always seem extreme. Maybe I'm just OCD but I don't leave Firefox running 24/7 for days or weeks at a time. I also open or have open upwards of 20-30 tabs at times and I've never had an issue with FF memory consumption even on my lowest-end machine (Celeron M single-core, 2 GB RAM) - OP - Isn't it possible that some of these memory leaks are due to poorly coded 3rd-party applications and plugins? I'm sure there must be some leaky flash apps out there.
 
For addons I'm using Modify headers, Rikaichan (not even enable most of the time), and noscript. I don't think those do anything.
I think it might have to do with flash but I don't know.
I'll try making a new profile and seeing how it goes.
 
I never noticed any memory leaks with Firefox, even with the earlier releases. Not saying there weren't any just never sat there opening and closing FF all day while staring at the performance monitor. Once in a while I would check how much memory FF was using and it always seemed reasonable to me. And the only reason I would check is because I would read threads with people bitching about it "omg, FF is so slow it's taking up so much memory, what a buggy pos" etc..
 
Memory leaks were a huge hassle with FF2, but since 3, and now 3.5. I have yet to have any issues.
 
The only program I have on my machine that may have a memory leak is the LCD software for my G15 and G13 keyboards. That little app is up to 660MB of ram usage.
 
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