Firefox swallows memory and cpu

**orrie** · July 17th, 2009

I am running fluxbox in an regular Ubuntu-install, and the Firefox is lagging after a while.. Very annoying.

Here are the top when Firefox not running:

Code:

top - 09:14:42 up  1:18,  2 users,  load average: 0.50, 0.64, 0.64
Tasks:  91 total,   1 running,  90 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  1.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni, 99.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   1026220k total,   398372k used,   627848k free,    65412k buffers
Swap:  3903752k total,      124k used,  3903628k free,   213424k cached

orrie@xx:~$ uptime
 09:14:48 up  1:18,  2 users,  load average: 0.46, 0.63, 0.63

.. quite normal really.

And this under load with Firefox running:

Code:

top - 09:04:42 up  1:08,  2 users,  load average: 1.03, 0.93, 0.64
Tasks:  92 total,   3 running,  89 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s): 62.1%us,  3.0%sy,  0.0%ni, 34.6%id,  0.0%wa,  0.3%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   1026220k total,   949496k used,    76724k free,    64224k buffers
Swap:  3903752k total,        0k used,  3903752k free,   231680k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND            
 3334 orrie     20   0  676m 549m  28m R 48.8 54.8  19:51.39 firefox    
 2789 root      20   0  170m  33m 7024 S 11.6  3.4   3:05.43 Xorg   
 5178 orrie     20   0 33320  14m 9.9m R  4.3  1.4   0:00.96 gnome-terminal  

orrie@xx:~$ uptime
 09:14:04 up  1:17,  2 users,  load average: 0.43, 0.65, 0.64

.. and here we can see that Firefox is using 48.8% CPU and 54.8% MEM.
Something isn't right.

GFX-card from /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Code:

.....
Section "Device"
 Identifier  "Card0"
 Driver      "radeon"
 VendorName  "ATI"
 BoardName   "Radeon 9200"
 BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
 Option      "BusType" "PCI"
EndSection

I have an suspision that Firefox using a lot of memory when the browser has been idling for some hours, or when have runned or running flash-element (YouTube).

It couldn't be the driver I presume?
Have just installed the package xserver-xorg-video-ati.

How to fix this really annoying thing?

**lovinglinux** · July 17th, 2009

Originally Posted by orrie

I have an suspision that Firefox using a lot of memory when the browser has been idling for some hours, or when have runned or running flash-element (YouTube).

I believe you are correct. High CPU usage could also be due to javascript pages.

Excessive memory usage could be due to an extension leaking memory.

I recommend following the tutorial Firefox optimization and troubleshooting thread. There are several tips there on how to improve Firefox performance.

I also recommend trying Firefox 3.5. The tutorial also explains how to install it, along with Firefox 3.0

**orrie** · July 19th, 2009

So the problem could not be related to the graphic-driver right?

**LightningCrash** · July 19th, 2009

Originally Posted by orrie

So the problem could not be related to the graphic-driver right?

Shouldn't be graphics drivers. You'd see high memory and CPU usage from Xorg if that were the case.

**ubuntuben** · July 19th, 2009

I've also been experiencing the same type of problem lately with Firefox. It's eating up much more RAM than before to the point where the swap memory is being used. This really slows things down to a crawl! Been wondering if there is a memory leak somewhere due to Firefox running. On quitting Firefox, everything goes back to normal. So the temporary solution is to quit Firefox and relaunch it. This has prompted me to buy more RAM to beef up my systems and hopefully avoid using swap memory. The same problem plagues my two desktops running Ubuntu 8.04.2.

**orrie** · July 19th, 2009

I should mention that on my amd64 I haven't got any problems at all.
Just on my laptop that is i386.

Perhaps it's some errors on the 32-bits version?

I'm running Jaunty btw

Originally Posted by lovinglinux

I recommend following the tutorial Firefox optimization and troubleshooting thread.

Originally Posted by Firefox optimaztion and troubleshooting thread

First make sure you have the proprietary graphics card driver installed. Go to "System >> Administration >> Hardware Drivers" and enable the corresponding driver.

I've just done that, and it says "No proprietary drivers are in use on this system.".

Am now trying out Firefox-3.5 to see if I get the same lag.

**orrie** · July 20th, 2009

Now, the big moment is here.
I have installed Firefox 3.5 and been trying it for like 5 minutes.

Right after logging in to Facebook and scrolling down to read an status, then the Firefox have crashed each time.

Code:

orrie@ubuntu:~$ firefox-3.5 http://www.facebook.com
Segmentation fault

Now I'm getting more and more annoyed.
Have been following the guide for optimizing and done this in Firefox 3.0, and now I've been trying 3.5 that are crashing RIGHT after I'm logging into Facebook.

What should the solution be?

Edit:
My conky says that Firefox is using 40% CPU and Xorg like.. 14% CPU or so.
Having two tabs up; this URL and playing an YouTube-video.
It's just the CPU that it troubles with, not the memory.
Running it in Firefox 3.0.10.

It shouldn't be like this?

**lovinglinux** · July 20th, 2009

Originally Posted by orrie

I've just done that, and it says "No proprietary drivers are in use on this system.".

What about an option to install a driver there?

Originally Posted by orrie

Right after logging in to Facebook and scrolling down to read an status, then the Firefox have crashed each time.

Code:

orrie@ubuntu:~$ firefox-3.5 http://www.facebook.com
Segmentation fault

Now I'm getting more and more annoyed.
Have been following the guide for optimizing and done this in Firefox 3.0, and now I've been trying 3.5 that are crashing RIGHT after I'm logging into Facebook.

What should the solution be?

There are some reports of problems with Facebook, but not crashing.

Originally Posted by orrie

My conky says that Firefox is using 40% CPU and Xorg like.. 14% CPU or so.
Having two tabs up; this URL and playing an YouTube-video.
It's just the CPU that it troubles with, not the memory.
Running it in Firefox 3.0.10.

It shouldn't be like this?

It shouldn't, but it is. I have the same CPU usage when playing flash videos. There is a bug report at http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-1692

**orrie** · July 20th, 2009

Originally Posted by lovinglinux

What about an option to install a driver there?

Nop. Nothing at all..

Originally Posted by lovinglinux

There are some reports of problems with Facebook, but not crashing.

Mine did crash.

I have now removed ~/.mozilla and restarted the browser.
That did work though.

Originally Posted by lovinglinux

It shouldn't, but it is. I have the same CPU usage when playing flash videos. There is a bug report at http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-1692

Right now I'm running one pidgin-conversation, gnome-terminal, Spotify through wineserver, and two tabs in Firefox-3.5 (this and addons.mozilla.org).
Xorg and firefox-3.5 are at 3% both now.
It varies a lot though.

Hopefully this should work, but I can't say that for sure further I've tested firefox-3.5 a bit more.

When I'm pressing ALT+TAB it's lagging a little bit, like before.
Really really annoying.