Why do we continually have to tolerate Firefox's ridiculous mem leak?

By WastedJoker
in Web Browser Discussion & Support

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Grand Master

Udedenkz

Posted
Posted

A good example would be loading an HD video on youtube. :)

I utterly fail to see how that image ends the thread.

1. Firefox

2. 144MB RAM.

3. More than a dozen tabs.

4. Logical Conclusion Follows.

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Grand Master

Kirkburn

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A good example would be loading an HD video on youtube. :)

1. Firefox

2. 144MB RAM.

3. More than a dozen tabs.

4. Logical Conclusion Follows.

Well no, not really. Not even those who are pointing out that it's addons (spikes) or intended functionality ("high" usage) would take that screenshot of proof of stability, tbh.

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Grand Master

Sikh

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I have 41 tabs open with Opera(dont ask) and im at 507,485 meg usage. Not bad.

With firefox, I opened the same tabs and im at about 1.4 gigs. Really!?

I dont know why, but Ive noticed firefox on the heavy side and its stock, no addons. Only time I use firefox is for DD-WRT and looking at the graphs. But regardless, stock latest installation of firefox and its this bad.

Im not promoting opera, but now I know why ive always liked opera, I never really had a reason besides it just worked for me. Been using it since 8 i believe or 7. Firefox I use secondary, NEVER use IE(thank god for independent windows updates with vista/7) and chrome for quick browsing since it loads the fastest.

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Grand Master

HawkMan

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A good example would be loading an HD video on youtube. :)

1. Firefox

2. 144MB RAM.

3. More than a dozen tabs.

4. Logical Conclusion Follows.

Doesn't end the thread anyway as it's not a bug that allways happens or to everyone. I've seen FF eat up well over 1 gig of memory of with a few tabs and no extensions. and while it's not technically a leak it's a memory handling bug that is known to them and they seem unable to fix it. they did a weak workaround with the minimize things, but that's just that, a workaround.

As for cache, as I said, there's cache and then there's the using up all your memory until there's no more with only a few tabs open, that's not cache. that's a bug. and could easily be described as a memory leak despite not fitting into the technical description of one.

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Grand Master

HawkMan

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I am going to ask for these sites that cause high RAM usage.

I require proof of your claims that I can reproduce.

:)

It's not a directly reproducable bug.

I've yet to see it happen in any pattern, outside of the fact it generally will. sites with lots of images will usually help advance it though, but I've see it happen, on plain installs just by browsing regular plain news sites and such as well.

Heck even the devs aknowledge the bug is there, so it's not like you need to pretend it's not there. it is there and is known, they just seem unable to fix it.

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Grand Master

+Majesticmerc MVC

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... sites with lots of images will usually help advance it though...

Thats because the images are being cached.

And developers don't acknowledge a memory leak of any significance, in fact, they state the opposite.

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Grand Master

HawkMan

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Thats because the images are being cached.

And developers don't acknowledge a memory leak of any significance, in fact, they state the opposite.

Well I know this has been in bugzilla before and was recognized as a bug, but not a memory leak (since technically it isn't)

but as I said it's also not standard caching, no cachign should use 90-95% of yoru available ram and keep tryign to use more. not on a web browser.

But then again, the FF coders are hardly very good coders to start with, though granted they probably can't be blamed for the completely borked extension system, since a system that so invasive into the whole software architecture is bound to be impossible to keep watertight and control what the extensions can do. which is probably why they're dropping them.

Also if cache was the issue, which it is not( it helps create the issue, but isn't the issue) Then how come something like Opera, can cache just as many pages backwards, but also cache pages forward, and not need to go above a decent 250MB of ram usage until you start hitting 50 tabs and such like me, even then it keeps within 450MB. I mean with Firefox being able to eat 1.2gigs of ram (that's when I noticed and killed it, it was still growing fast) with a mere handful (at most 5 or 6) tabs, and non of them having or having had any heavy image or flash content. there is a serious design flaw in FF.

Edited by HawkMan
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Grand Master

HawkMan

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Not reproducible? You should work on that.

Not all erros in complex software can be step by step reproduce able.

When you learn proper coding or even troubleshooting whether it's software or even hardware or mechanics, you'll learn this.

yes at some point it probably is step by step reproducable, but that's by mechanism so deep in the software, and covering things you probably don't have control over. there are after all automatic routines in these programs, especially in memory handling that does things their own way, without you being able to do anything about them, what if the bug only occurs when they do something in a special order or something.

think before you talk.

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Grand Master

Xilo

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Posted
Not all erros in complex software can be step by step reproduce able.

When you learn proper coding or even troubleshooting whether it's software or even hardware or mechanics, you'll learn this.

yes at some point it probably is step by step reproducable, but that's by mechanism so deep in the software, and covering things you probably don't have control over. there are after all automatic routines in these programs, especially in memory handling that does things their own way, without you being able to do anything about them, what if the bug only occurs when they do something in a special order or something.

think before you talk.

The worst of which are timing and race condition bugs. These are an absolute nightmare to solve.

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Grand Master

cacoe

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What size images are you working on anyway? I've never can get mine to go that high.

It's not just the resolution of the images, it's the amount of layers + the size you've set your history to go back.

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Grand Master

KoL Veteran

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What size images are you working on anyway? I've never can get mine to go that high.
It's not just the resolution of the images, it's the amount of layers + the size you've set your history to go back.

Yeah I have two big files with a lot of layers and Photoshop have been open all day.

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Grand Master

Kirkburn

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Well I know this has been in bugzilla before and was recognized as a bug, but not a memory leak (since technically it isn't)

Link please.

but as I said it's also not standard caching, no cachign should use 90-95% of yoru available ram and keep tryign to use more. not on a web browser.

It doesn't. Yes, you found a bug: it's not necessarily Fx's fault. In fact, it was probably a plugin or extension.

But then again, the FF coders are hardly very good coders to start with, though granted they probably can't be blamed for the completely borked extension system, since a system that so invasive into the whole software architecture is bound to be impossible to keep watertight and control what the extensions can do. which is probably why they're dropping them.

No, they are not "bad" coders. Please back that up. I would also love to know how one open source project can have better coders than another, especially when the number involved is generally pretty large.

They are not dropping extensions. The system is not borked, and it is intentionally quite free about what you can do - it's the point. Fx addons have warning screens about trust for a reason, and AMO (the addons site) reviews all submissions.

Also if cache was the issue, which it is not( it helps create the issue, but isn't the issue) Then how come something like Opera, can cache just as many pages backwards, but also cache pages forward, and not need to go above a decent 250MB of ram usage until you start hitting 50 tabs and such like me, even then it keeps within 450MB. I mean with Firefox being able to eat 1.2gigs of ram (that's when I noticed and killed it, it was still growing fast) with a mere handful (at most 5 or 6) tabs, and non of them having or having had any heavy image or flash content. there is a serious design flaw in FF.

I really doubt Opera or any browser can hit 50 active tabs without going over 250MB. It's basically impossible - there's just too much information. If it then manages to keep within 450MB (or some other arbitrary "low" number), that's because it's dropping cached data. It's quite fair to have different approaches to when you start to drop data, and it rather depends on the system RAM availability.

If you find a site where the "leak" occurs, please point it out. If it affects all of Firefox, it should be reasonably reproducible - if not, it's probably other factors, i.e. plugins, extensions, bad JS, or OS.

Note, I have personally seen Firefox reach high RAM usage. It was not Firefox's fault, and I actually bothered to check.

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Veteran

PreKe

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Did you not read my sentence or something?

It's nothing to do with how much memory most of us have, I have 4GB, when an application like a brower is using 500mb-1GB+ it gets slow and sluggish.

Why would an application using a mere 10-20% of your memory cause your beast of a computer to become slow? Something is obviously very wrong with your setup, because an application using just a small part of the total RAM is not supposed to be able to slow it down.

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Community Regular

aludanyi

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Because it is very hard to write a fairly complex application in native code (C/C++) without some memory leaks... Firefox is free but programming isn't and spending a dollar in debugging one of the not so critical memory leak bug is equal to NOT spending a dollar to develop a new feature. Critical bugs must be corrected, non-critical bugs are always economized, the choice is a bug or a new feature... and if a non-critical bug doesn't mean a lost user, a new feature is always an opportunity to win a new one.

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