Public bug reported: Hi,
I noted that the recent versions of Firefox (3.0.4 and 3.0.5) would randomly explode in terms of memory use. It happened on at least the following two machines: * laptop, Dell Lattitude D600 (768 MB RAM, Pentium M), OS: Ubuntu 8.10 with firefox 3.0.4 and later 3.0.5 * desktop, Dell Dimension 8250 (2 GB RAM, Pentium 4), OS: Ubuntu 8.04 with firefox 3.0.5 This problem happened to me today on the desktop, in which `top' reported the following memory use: PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 10021 wirawan 20 0 109m 1684 1668 R 100 0.1 1472:19 ld-linux.so.2 9675 wirawan 20 0 2049m 1.7g 6312 S 2 87.9 22:23.60 firefox I typically let firefox run for many days on this machine, as this is a desktop machine in office. The computer is also never suspended. Fortunately the computer has 2G of memory so I could still manage to bring down firefox without injuring the whole system. I post the other process too; It was actually Acroread 8; `ps faux' reports: wira...@orbital:~$ ps faux|grep '100[2]1' wirawan 10021 3.9 0.0 111904 1688 ? R 2008 1485:20 /lib/ld-linux.so.2 /opt/Adobe/Reader8/Reader/intellinux/bin/acroread --display :0.0 -progressPipe 3 -exitPipe 4 I suspect that it was started as a plugin by firefox. Unfortunately I already killed everything by now. I am sure that this problem would appear again, and if it does, I will post more information here. Firefox was upgraded yesterday to version 3.0.5, so it has been running for less than 24 hours. Other than the PDF plugin, and Ubuntu standard plugins (vlc, mplayer, divx, quicktime), I don't have any other plugins. Specifically, this firefox is not equipped with Adobe Flash plugin. The last pages that I left on, (if I am correct, based on the firefox's sessions restored), are: * http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=pcat17071&type=page&initialize=false&sp=-bestsellingsort+skuid&nrp=15&iht=n&list=y&sc=Global&st=under_20page&usc=All+Categories&ks=960&prids=&cp=3&qp=&_requestid=556654 * http://www.chem.ucla.edu/dept/Faculty/dxn/pages/teaching.html * http://www.pcc.qub.ac.uk/tec/courses/f90/stu-notes/f90-stu.html * http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim8200/codes.htm I don't recall how much memory this firefox uses last night, before this exploded today. Probably I should make a simple cron job to collect the stats of firefox, eh? Usually the memory explosion happens when the computer is idling and screen saver is running. I wonder if there *is* indeed correlation between these two. In the past, I never encountered this kind of memory explosion in the past with firefox 2, if I remember it correctly. Another thing that I suspect is whether heavy-duty pages such as Yahoo mail (the new interface) is a culprit also. I cannot confirm this yet. If anyone ever experience this kind of problem, please add your comment. It is very annoying that now firefox becomes a time bomb in my computer. What I do temporarily as a workaround in my laptop is to add the following limitations on its startup script (/usr/lib/firefox-3.0.5/firefox.sh), just before the execution of firefox binary: # Limiting virtual address space, data segment, and resident memory ulimit -d 500000 ulimit -v 500000 ulimit -m 250000 This is *not* without its own peril, as I observe that firefox's vmsize can grow quickly although the real rss is not that big. Wirawan ** Affects: firefox (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided Status: New -- Firefox 3 memory use explodes by itself randomly https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/314424 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
