Bug 29521

Summary: Firefox very slow and leaking memory after latest upgrade
Product: Mageia Reporter: Dag Nygren <dag>
Component: RPM PackagesAssignee: Mageia Bug Squad <bugsquad>
Status: RESOLVED OLD QA Contact:
Severity: major    
Priority: Normal CC: davidwhodgins, fri, ftg, joselp, lewyssmith, marja11
Version: 8Keywords: NEEDINFO
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Source RPM: firefox-91.1.0-1.mga8 CVE:
Status comment:

Description Dag Nygren 2021-10-04 09:47:29 CEST
Description of problem:
After the latest upgrade to 91.1.0 (ESR) Firefox is noticably slower and eating memory as crazy. I was up to 6,5GB after one day of usage. The tabs open are exactly the same as with the previous version as I have my "standard" tabs so something is very wrong.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
91.1.0

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Upgrade Firefox
2.Use as normally
3.Watch memory footprint rise.


Will try to downgrade now to verify that this was the problem.
Comment 1 Morgan Leijström 2021-10-04 11:12:12 CEST
Thank you for the report.

I dont see the problem here, on 64 bit plasma, i7, nvidia-current.

I have hundreds of tabs (i have not cleaned for a while...)
Switching between a number of them, memory goes to 2 gig + 230 k shared.  After idling on this bugzilla page a minute, it is back to 600 + 230 k, 1% CPU.

CC: (none) => fri
Ever confirmed: 1 => 0
Status: NEW => UNCONFIRMED

Comment 2 Dag Nygren 2021-10-04 20:34:17 CEST
I do not have that many tabs, perhaps 20-30 concurrent and I do have an older slower laptop, also Nvidia, but after downgrading to 78.13.0esr all is well again. So the problem is definitely in the "upgraded" firefox.  It is still really consuming too much RAM compared to other browsers, but the total stays under 4 GB. And it is very much more agile. Something stinks badly in the 91 version ;-)
Comment 3 Morgan Leijström 2021-10-04 21:00:29 CEST
Hm. And you do not have a plugin that may behave badly with new version of Firefox?  (Just a shot in the dark)

I now sent a ping on the QA mail list for this bug.
Comment 4 Dave Hodgins 2021-10-04 23:13:56 CEST
After at least a day since last restarting firefox, with 13 tabs always open and
many other tabs opened and closed during that time, htop is showing 4710M
virtual, 614M resident, and 255M shared. This is on a 16GB ram system.
$ free -m
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           16020        4441        1501         238       10077       11009
Swap:          32761           2       32759

The firefox memory usage is not showing any indication of memory leaks with
about:plugins showing two plugins
OpenH264 Video Codec provided by Cisco Systems, Inc.
Widevine Content Decryption Module provided by Google Inc.
about:addons shows 5 enabled
- DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials
- Flash and Video Download
- Google Analytics Opt-out Add-on (by Google)
- NoScript
- Privacy Badger

I've disabled on disk storage for the cache, so it's only in memory.
about:memory can be used for very detailed measurements broken down by process
id.

So it doesn't appear to be a problem with firefox itself.

CC: (none) => davidwhodgins

Comment 5 Dag Nygren 2021-10-04 23:22:18 CEST
It might be a plugin. I don't hav very many but I should probably try to disable them one by one.
Comment 6 Morgan Leijström 2021-10-05 00:15:25 CEST
There is now Firefox 91.2.0 ESR in updates testing to try, Bug 29525.
Comment 7 Dave Hodgins 2021-10-05 00:53:29 CEST
After restarting firefox to switch to the newly updated version, the mem
numbers are pretty much the same as before, with the same tabs, addons, and
plugins.
Comment 8 sturmvogel 2021-10-05 15:29:07 CEST
To troubleshoot such issues, it is always recommended to start Firefox in safe-mode.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-extensions-themes-to-fix-problems#firefox:linux:fx91
Comment 9 Jose Manuel López 2021-10-07 17:46:34 CEST
Hi,

Have you tried starting Firefox with a new profile?

CC: (none) => joselpddj

Frank Griffin 2021-11-12 00:43:35 CET

Status: UNCONFIRMED => NEW
Ever confirmed: 0 => 1
CC: (none) => ftg
Keywords: (none) => NEEDINFO

Comment 10 Jose Manuel López 2021-11-12 08:45:43 CET
I that see it, is that Firefox open more slower in each new version in Linux, because in Windows 10 open fast, very fast...

I don't know if from Mageia, we can fix this or simply, is a problem of Mozilla...but Firefox is show really bad in this to the Linux users....

In other things, I don't see to Firefox more slower that the others browsers and neither that eating more ram. 

Right now, from Firefox 91.3 all works ok, but it is very very slow opening...

Chromium, for example, is very more fast whit the same extensions and settings

Greetings!!
Comment 11 Lewis Smith 2022-02-12 20:11:57 CET
@Dag
Sorry to have left this, it went off the radar.
Are you still having the problem? How did you notice - or measure - "memory footprint"?

Dave's suggestion of 'about:memory' is interesting, but the output is so detailed that the overall usage is not evident. The initial "Main Process" section looks most relevant.

CC: (none) => lewyssmith

Comment 12 Marja Van Waes 2022-04-22 09:47:40 CEST
(In reply to Lewis Smith from comment #11)
> @Dag
> Sorry to have left this, it went off the radar.
> Are you still having the problem? How did you notice - or measure - "memory
> footprint"?
> 
> Dave's suggestion of 'about:memory' is interesting, but the output is so
> detailed that the overall usage is not evident. The initial "Main Process"
> section looks most relevant.

Two months later...
Dag, please _reopen_ this report if you still have the same problem, and provide the requested information.

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
CC: (none) => marja11
Resolution: (none) => OLD