User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0 Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0 Firefox's memory use increases monotonically during browsing. I've had it up to 1.8GB with 3 tabs open. I don't think this was a problem in RC1, but I only used RC1 for a day or two so I can't be sure. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Open Browser 2. Open every Gawker website: gawker.com, gizmodo.com, lifehacker.com, kotaku.com, jezebel.com, jalopnik.com, deadspin.com. 3. Weep as the pageouts begin; closing tabs does not save you. Actual Results: For me doing it just now, memory use for firefox-bin increased from 14% to 42%, and dropped back down to 36% several minutes after closing the tabs. On net, browser memory use increased nearly a gigabyte. Expected Results: Browser deallocates most of the 1.1 gigabytes it allocated to load those pages. This is running on a Macbook Pro with OSX 10.6.6. I use noscript but I think I've allowed all the domains that gawker websItes use. I was also using a userstyle but I really doubt that's the problem (also this happens with regular browsing too but the Gawker sites are the worst). I'm marking it critical because it makes the browser fairly unusable after a few hours, forcing the user to restart it regularly (or less savvy users to get very confused), and overall makes the browser considerably less competitive against Google Chrome.

It could be a problematic addon. In order to see if that's the case, could you see if the issue occurs if using Firefox in safe mode: http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+Mode How about with a new, empty testing profile? (Don't install any addons into it) http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Basic+Troubleshooting#w_8-make-a-new-profile

Note that safemode also disables the JavaScript JITs, so it may mask an important leak. Try a new profile.

By strange coincidence I was about to submit a similar bug. I had noticed that once FF4 settles down to a fairly constant memory usage (~400mb with 3 tabs open - google reader + two forums), gawker sites did not release all memory after their tabs were closed. About 30mb remained after 4 sites were opened and closed. I suspect that this is made worse by ABP+noscript (I use them in combination and allow necessary script domains on gawker sites, with the fanboy list for ABP). I retested with a clean profile (only plugins were latest stable versions of DivX Web Player, Flash, and Quicktime), and in safe-mode. With a fresh profile I browsed around until usage settled at about 213mb. Then repeatedly opened and closed a large number of tabs with www.gawker.com in them. ~10mins elapsed between closing a batchs of tabs and opening a new batch. Results were as follows for a fresh (default) profile (a few forums tabs remained open): Mem Use after tabs closed, # of tabs opened then closed (in a batch): 213 251, 20 310, 40 322, 40 371, 50 403, 60 447, 70 466, 60 490, 70 Overall mem usage increased 277mb after opening/closing 410 tabs. i.e. an average increase of 0.68mb per tab. This was repeated in safe-mode: 166 177, 10 220, 40 258, 40 314, 50 Overall mem usage increased 148mb after opening/closing 140 tabs. i.e. an average of 1.06mb per tab. I think that an endurance test on opening and closing gawker.com tabs could be quite useful. Maybe do it about 3000 times to see if mem usage peaks or trends to an asymptote?

BTW, am on win7 64bit with 4GB of RAM. Am using a nightly build with this User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.2a1pre) Gecko/20110323 Firefox/4.0b13pre Build changeset: http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/774ec081a9c1

Sorry to add another comment, but memory usage is Private Working Set from Windows Task Manager.

I actually now suspect it might be Stylish at fault; taking it out seems to remove the acute perforamnce issues opening the gawker sites. I've got it deactivated and I'll see if there's still a slow memory leak, since a leak could have interacted with stylish's resource hogging. But after about an hour of browsing I'm still doing okay.

It's definitely not stylish, although stylish was causing serious problems for me on the Gawker sites (which is why I used them as the example). After a day of using Firefox with Stylish deactivated, memory usage with 3 tabs open was at 38%. Restarting and restoring those tabs brought me down to 6% (%s are out of 4GB). I'll run for another day in an empty testing profile to see if it recurs.

What other add-ons are you using? Are you using AdBlock Plus and no-script?

I've been using no-script but not adblock. Now I've switched over to a testing profile with no addons.

Tried on Win XP comp with 512MB of RAM, NoScript but no ADP - Fx was using 168,000 k before, after was 223,000 k. Seems it's not just a Mac bug. Is it specific to these sites, though? I've seen other complaints of memory not all released - one was ZDNet, in their comparison test of the latest browsers (which was generally positive toward Fx 4.0).

I did tests opening 70 tabs of those gawker sites. Test build was: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.2a1pre) Gecko/20110327 Firefox/4.2a1pre Without ABP: firefox.exe plugin-container NEW SESSION 23,508 - 70 PAGES OPEN 1,047,136 441,056 PAGES CLOSED 182,888 13,788 With ABP: firefox.exe plugin-container NEW SESSION 47,060 - 70 PAGES OPEN 1,036,324 169,908 PAGES CLOSED 741,472 9,680 Memory is Window's Task Manager's "Private Working Set". about:memory snapshots in the attachment, if those are useful.

What version of ABP were you using, and what filter sets?

I still have issues (maybe less?) when I run using only Noscript and Vimperator. I will be infinitely sad if these problems are vimperator's fault since vimperator is the only reason I use Firefox.

(In reply to comment #13) > I still have issues (maybe less?) when I run using only Noscript and > Vimperator. > > I will be infinitely sad if these problems are vimperator's fault since > vimperator is the only reason I use Firefox. Don't think that's likely. Many have memory issues without addons. I think some addons just exacerbate firefox's memory issues.

OK, I decided to do a marathon endurance test on opening and closing batches of 100 or so gawker.com tabs (the new layout, not the version that uk.gawker.com may get). This was performed on a fresh default profile with the latest nightly build (Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.2a1pre) Gecko/20110327 Firefox/4.2a1pre).One window remained constantly open holding a www.google.com tab, while a new window was opened and ~100x gawker tabs were opened in it, and after they all loaded it was closed. This process was repeated many times until 3200 gawker.com tabs had been opened and closed in batches. The memory use results from windows task manager were as follows: #tabs_opened cumulative_#tabs Private Peak After Closing 10 10 229 100 110 1397 1468 290 50 160 738 1468 312 50 210 765 1468 334 50 260 788 1468 328 50 310 761 1468 346 50 360 775 1468 354 50 410 790 1468 371 100 510 1386 1474 437 100 610 1399 1474 488 100 710 1397 1474 516 100 810 1384 1474 536 100 910 1390 1474 563 100 1010 1396 1493 577 100 1110 1384 1493 588 110 1220 1488 1608 602 100 1320 1403 1608 612 100 1420 1387 1608 615 100 1520 1391 1608 618 109 1629 1540 1619 643 100 1729 1398 1619 641 100 1829 1397 1619 639 100 1929 1430 1619 650 100 2029 1413 1619 649 110 2139 1504 1636 677 100 2239 1411 1636 668 100 2339 1413 1636 667 100 2439 1428 1636 669 100 2539 1422 1636 662 100 2639 1394 1636 666 100 2739 1399 1636 658 130 2869 1728 1830 661 131 3000 1768 1856 700 100 3100 1807 1963 724* 100 3200 1446 1963 718 * browser became quite unresponsive with dramatic leaking (~ 250mb in less than 1min) on one page dramtically on one page before closing. about:memory after closing 3000th tab: Overview Memory mapped: 1,569,718,272 Memory in use: 348,639,830 Other Information Description Value malloc/allocated 348,644,382 malloc/mapped 1,569,718,272 malloc/committed 741,761,024 malloc/dirty 3,960,832 win32/privatebytes 794,107,904 win32/workingset 796,819,456 js/gc-heap 192,937,984 js/string-data 3,360,558 js/mjit-code 9,391,888 storage/sqlite/pagecache 48,134,472 storage/sqlite/other 1,491,744 gfx/d2d/surfacecache 937,460 gfx/d2d/surfacevram 6,173,248 images/chrome/used/raw 0 images/chrome/used/uncompressed 514,500 images/chrome/unused/raw 0 images/chrome/unused/uncompressed 0 images/content/used/raw 71,440 images/content/used/uncompressed 401,112 images/content/unused/raw 0 images/content/unused/uncompressed 0 layout/all 730,074 layout/bidi 0 gfx/surface/image 1,030,112 gfx/surface/win32 0 about:memory after closing 3100th tab: Overview Memory mapped: 1,572,864,000 Memory in use: 351,185,292 Other Information Description Value malloc/allocated 351,189,844 malloc/mapped 1,572,864,000 malloc/committed 741,675,008 malloc/dirty 2,596,864 win32/privatebytes 817,500,160 win32/workingset 828,444,672 js/gc-heap 192,937,984 js/string-data 3,454,476 js/mjit-code 9,636,812 storage/sqlite/pagecache 48,167,240 storage/sqlite/other 1,491,744 gfx/d2d/surfacecache 940,404 gfx/d2d/surfacevram 6,173,248 images/chrome/used/raw 0 images/chrome/used/uncompressed 514,500 images/chrome/unused/raw 0 images/chrome/unused/uncompressed 0 images/content/used/raw 71,440 images/content/used/uncompressed 401,112 images/content/unused/raw 0 images/content/unused/uncompressed 0 layout/all 730,074 layout/bidi 0 gfx/surface/image 1,034,016 gfx/surface/win32 0 about:memory after closing 3200th tab: Overview Memory mapped: 1,566,572,544 Memory in use: 348,598,224 Other Information Description Value malloc/allocated 348,602,776 malloc/mapped 1,566,572,544 malloc/committed 736,677,888 malloc/dirty 3,493,888 win32/privatebytes 812,908,544 win32/workingset 824,389,632 js/gc-heap 188,743,680 js/string-data 3,484,902 js/mjit-code 9,888,849 storage/sqlite/pagecache 48,167,240 storage/sqlite/other 1,491,744 gfx/d2d/surfacecache 940,404 gfx/d2d/surfacevram 6,173,248 images/chrome/used/raw 0 images/chrome/used/uncompressed 514,500 images/chrome/unused/raw 0 images/chrome/unused/uncompressed 0 images/content/used/raw 71,440 images/content/used/uncompressed 401,112 images/content/unused/raw 0 images/content/unused/uncompressed 0 layout/all 731,101 layout/bidi 0 gfx/surface/image 1,034,016 gfx/surface/win32 0

(In reply to comment #12) > What version of ABP were you using, and what filter sets? 1.3.5 EasyList

@Rodrigo: Could you try the latest development build of ABP? It seems to have fixed a bug causing a lot of memory not being released.

Indeed, it seems to be fixed. Same tests as Comment #11 Without Adblock Plus: firefox.exe plugin-container.exe NEW SESSION 23124 0 70 PAGES OPEN 1125552 647760 PAGES CLOSED 205012 19252 With Adblock Plus 1.3.6rc.2957: firefox.exe plugin-container.exe NEW SESSION 62260 0 70 PAGES OPEN 1061764 177268 PAGES CLOSED 257112 10152

Works for me on Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:2.2a1pre) Gecko/20110406 Firefox/4.2a1pre The memory and CPU processes are dropping as soon as I close the tabs. Also, could you see if the issue occurs if using Firefox in safe mode: http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+Mode How about with a new, empty testing profile? (Don't install any addons into it) http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Basic+Troubleshooting#w_8-make-a-new-profile

This kind of bug often results in a pile-on, where multiple people report on similar symptoms and it all becomes very confusing. So I've retitled this to be about the gawker problems John McDonnell originally reported. John, can you summarize your findings so far with respect to the original problem? It's hard to tell what the status is from the comments. Thanks.

Hi, so I actually was having this problem in general, but the Gawker redesigned websites seemed to really strain the browser so I was using them as an example. Lately I've been running with only: - noscript - vimperator - rapportive- power twitter. In my current configuration, after Firefox has been on for a day or two, it's using up about a quarter of my system's memory. I'm not doing anything "weird" besides running these plugins. I've also been steering clear of Gawker. When I ran in a blank profile, the problem seemed less noticeable. I can try and run for a few more days with a blank profile to confirm that that fixes the problem if you think that would be helpful.

Reporter, do you have anything new to add about this issue?

I'll try to repeat the tests from comment 15 this weekend.

I have nothing new to report, but since I'm still having performance issues, I'll try running in a blank profile for a few days and see if I fail to replicate.

I think it must have been a plugin because I've been running in a blank profile for several days and have mostly been coasting between 14% and 18% memory usage. My prime suspect now is noscript. As stated before, memory usage with plugins would soar up past 40%.

Reporter, considering comment25, can you please change the resolution of the bug to Resolved Worksforme or Invalid.

Okay, duly resolved.