Solved Firefox memory Leak?

rap33042 · Apr 26, 2011

This morning I woke my computer up (sleep mode) and was astonished to see memory usage at 54%! I have 8GB RAM and I've never seen it this high.

I checked Task Manager and saw that Firefox was using 1.8GB and still climbing; about every second it increased by a few Bytes, like clockwork.

There were also three instances of that plugin-container process. Why 3?!

I thought Firefox v4.+ was supposed to have gotten rid of their memory (leak?) problems.

Here's a snapshot and I hope somebody can give me some idea of why it's doing this. TIA!

Not Myself · Apr 26, 2011

Index page • mozillaZine Forums

On the right side, there are two places to enter searches, Boards and Knowledge Base. Enter "Memory Leak" and "Plug-in Container" in each of the two search boxes to find information pertaining to your questions.

rap33042 · Apr 26, 2011

@Not Myself:
A lot of great information here!
Thanks!

StalkeR · Apr 26, 2011

Hello rap33042. I'll suggest you to do this in Task Manager.
View->Select Columns and there select CPU Time. After the process is started it will count a time,so you should easy know what processes and when.

It should look like this:

StalkeR.

Wallonn7 · Apr 26, 2011

StalkeR said:
Hello rap33042. I'll suggest you to do this in Task Manager.
View->Select Columns and there select CPU Time. After the process is started it will count a time,so you should easy know what processes and when.
It should look like this:
View attachment 151417

StalkeR.

Thanks!

StalkeR · Apr 26, 2011

^^
You're welcome!

rap33042 · Apr 26, 2011

I've started eliminating add-ons in Firefox to see if I can narrow down the culprit.

I'll let you know what I come up with.

Maxxwire · Apr 28, 2011

Firefox sometimes runs for almost 1 GB of RAM on my Win 7 x64 computer.

~Maxx~

.

rap33042 · Apr 28, 2011

All right-
I've gotten rid of the add-ons in the snapshot and it seems to have gotten rid of the memory problem.
I don't really know at this point which add-on is the problem:

Mike Connor · Apr 28, 2011

You should have a look at this;

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/performance/#addon-11

and also at this;

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ramback/

Regards....Mike Connor

Wallonn7 · Apr 28, 2011

Maxxwire said:
Firefox sometimes runs for almost 1 GB of RAM on my Win 7 x64 computer.

~Maxx~

.

:what: Not even after opening about 80, 90 tabs I managed to reach 35% of it!

Maxxwire · Apr 28, 2011

Wallonn7 said:
:what: Not even after opening about 80, 90 tabs I managed to reach 35% of it!

That screen capture showing almost 1GB of RAM usage was taken with 1 tab open in Firefox...

~Maxx~

Wallonn7 · Apr 28, 2011

Maxxwire said:
Wallonn7 said:

:what: Not even after opening about 80, 90 tabs I managed to reach 35% of it!

Click to expand...

That screen capture showing almost 1GB of RAM usage was taken with 1 tab open in Firefox...

~Maxx~

:what::what::what::what::what::what:Just one? Just to supplement my previous post, the number of tabs that I mentioned were loaded roughly at the same time and without clearing the browser cache.

TheOneBobbyGunn · Apr 29, 2011

I've had issues with memory leaks too, and I found MemoryFox to be a life savor. Browser Memory Mozilla Firefox Add-on Extension – Memory Fox or https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/memory-fox/

rap33042 · Apr 29, 2011

Since installing the RAMBack extension, Firefox memory usage has stayed at about 340MB.

Thanks Mike!

hyzandey · May 31, 2011

I was having this annoying problem when I was using Firefox at work. After I changed some values in "about:config", memory problems never happened again. Those values are:

javascript.options.mem.max: Its default value is -1, what I guess means automatic or unlimited. After some testing, I decided it's good to modify it to 50000, a value that appears to be in KBytes. Feel free to raise it to a proper value for you.
javascript.options.mem.gc_frequency: Its default value is 300 (seconds?). I changed it to 5. I did not realize any overhead.

After those modifications, I started to realize that Firefox released about 5 megabytes of memory every 5 seconds and never started to take all my memory again when accessing GMail (I use it during the whole day) and other sites that like to abuse of JavaScript.

I got my coworker to change this values too and he says it worked for him. It makes me think the memory leak problem is solved!

For testing purposes people can access the "about:memory" address. the "js/gc-heap" shows how much memory the JavaScript heap is using.

I hope this is useful.

Sorry for my English. It's not my native language.

chrysalis · Jun 1, 2011

http://www.sevenforums.com/1423907-post50.html

same for me, some new tips in this thread I havent tried tho so will try them myself thanks.

chrysalis · Jun 1, 2011

well hyazndey I really got my hopes up after your post because about:memory does indeed show the memory been used by js/gc-heap. However even setting the javascript limit to 50000 and the GC to 5 seconds it still goes over it.

JerometheGiraff · Jun 2, 2011

Why does FireFox use so much memory ? The same with Chrome it has a major memory leak. I don't like IE and with those two browsers as my only option it is really frustrating, that a browser has to page virtual memory (sometimes) Chrome is a nice browser but until they fix the memory leak issue, it falls into the same category as IE and FireFox as some great add-ons but it to as memory leak issues. When is Mozilla and Google going to finally fix these issues, they can add all the bells and whistles they want but when a browser is eating up ram that is no excuse. A browser should preform as a browser not as a power hungry app and there should be no need for extension to patch this because they are just extensions not part of the core coding of the browser.

chrysalis · Jun 4, 2011

the leak is javascript, if I disable javascript completley it doesnt happen, but of course thats not a solution as then it becomes useless as a browser.

so now I have installed noscript and testing site by site one enabled for javascript at a time, so far it seems if 'any' one site is enabled it leaks. But each site leaks at a different rate.

Given that the memory recovers on activity the bug looks to me that GC is not running when idle and waits for user activity, which to me is backwards, you would want it to run when idle and not when user activity.

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