Firefox 56 extreme memory leaks?

[davidm]

Is anyone else noticing some severe memory leaks with Firefox-56? I've never seen it this bad. If I leave it open overnight it will leak 1 gb+ of memory. With under 75 tabs open I have seen it using 4.5 GB of memory within a couple hours.

I went ahead and downgraded to stable Firefox-52.4.0.

FYI: Also from what I understand Firefox 57 is going to disable legacy extensions and only use webextensions. Right now the nightlies allow one to use legacy extensions but I hear this will go away with the release. So I went ahead just masked '>=www-client/firefox-56.0'

Does anyone know of an easy working overlay which provides Firefox 55.x? I'd prefer to run that over the 52.x branch. It looks like I will be having to use it for some time until more of my extensions get ported to webextensions or when 56.x gets clear of the massive memory leaks.

[ct85711]

The only time I saw a significant memory leak with firefox, was caused by a bug in gcc (iirc, was a early version of 7.x), but is already fixed.

As far as the legacy extensions part goes, it doesn't affect me much as most of my extensions are already ported over. I don't use flash, so I don't been to worry about that pile of trash.

[davidm]

Yes right now I am in the process of installing the Firefox 57 beta from the Mozilla overlay. I guess I will try things out and see if I can make it work. Hopefully the memory leak I am seeing is gone with it. I'll really miss Tabs Mix Plus though.

[Hu]

I recommend against using Firefox 55. If you don't want to use the most current non-ESR (and I happen to agree with that decision), you should use an ESR build, rather than an arbitrary outdated non-ESR. Security fixes are not backported into non-ESR releases, but are backported (in theory) to ESR, so from a security perspective, 52.4 is better than 55, since 52.4 has all the same relevant fixes as 56.

On a personal note, regarding Tab Mix Plus, are you missing it because the author has not yet ported it to WebExtensions or because the author plans not to port it to WebExtensions ever? If the latter, could you provide a citation for that plan?

[krinn]

really disappointed by mozilla 54 myself, it keep complaining that i should enable DRM shit, and webextensions is left running half time i exit firefox, and busy a core.
at each new version, i dislike it even more. LOL if i weren't so lazy to backup my bookmarks, i would had switch.
but my laziness have limits.

[Josef.95]

krinn..
the

DRM shit

is optional via eme-free useflag
eme-free : Disable EME (DRM plugin) cabability at build time

[Zucca]

I've noticed memory leaking with Thunderbird too. I keep Thunderbird open almost all the time. Sometimes its memory usage is around 6GiB. At that point I usually restart it.
I thought to mention this since Firefox and Thunderbird have similarities under the hood.

[krinn]

krinn..
the

DRM shit

is optional via eme-free useflag
eme-free : Disable EME (DRM plugin) cabability at build time

Thank you Josef.95, i don't have it, but i see newer version have it, doing the changes in my package.use for later use.

[Hu]

It's unfortunate that users need to opt into being DRM free.

[ct85711]

Now, just wondering, but have you bothered to look at the memory allocation statistics within firefox; to see if firefox is the actual cause, and maybe where the memory leak may be. You should be able to get that info, by going to about:memory in your address bar.

At least for in firefox-56, you have 4 sections towards the top, 2 saying "Show memory report", then "Free Memory", followed by "Save GC & CC logs". The 2 memory report sections profiles the memory usage for firefox, and generates a report of where the memory is being used (the second memory report is to generate and save it to a file, the first section displays it to the screen).

[davidm]

Now, just wondering, but have you bothered to look at the memory allocation statistics within firefox; to see if firefox is the actual cause, and maybe where the memory leak may be. You should be able to get that info, by going to about:memory in your address bar.

At least for in firefox-56, you have 4 sections towards the top, 2 saying "Show memory report", then "Free Memory", followed by "Save GC & CC logs". The 2 memory report sections profiles the memory usage for firefox, and generates a report of where the memory is being used (the second memory report is to generate and save it to a file, the first section displays it to the screen).

Thanks but it was obviously Firefox. Restarting it would release the memory. At least for a while. I'm using the ESR now which doesn't have the problem. I'll probably just stay on it for a while until the webextension situation is solved.

[davidm]

On a personal note, regarding Tab Mix Plus, are you missing it because the author has not yet ported it to WebExtensions or because the author plans not to port it to WebExtensions ever? If the latter, could you provide a citation for that plan?

Hi, a while ago the author stated that it is not ready for webextensions and would take considerable work and time. They were soliciting for donations. I don't believe he ruled out ever porting it though.

Here are some relevant threads I found on the TMP developer's forum:

http://tabmixplus.org/forum/viewtopic.p ... 2&start=40
http://tabmixplus.org/forum/viewtopic.p ... 631#p72631

October 9, 2017: "Tab Mix Webextensions will take some time"


Also this is a good resource which lists some blockers:
https://arewewebextensionsyet.com/

[ct85711]

Restarting it would release the memory. At least for a while.

Obviously it is within firefox, but where? It makes a big difference if it's some extension, or flash, or something else... Cause if it's from some extension or plugin you are using, then blaming firefox for something else's problem doesn't resolve the issue...

I know for me, I keep my browser instance open for several days (often more then a week at a time) with several tabs, and rarely have an issue with the memory going over 800MB. Even having multiple html5 videos playing, my memory rarely becomes an issue (I've had up to 5 twitch streams open on source and never had an issue; can't do more due to bandwidth constraints).

[davidm]

Restarting it would release the memory. At least for a while.

Obviously it is within firefox, but where? It makes a big difference if it's some extension, or flash, or something else... Cause if it's from some extension or plugin you are using, then blaming firefox for something else's problem doesn't resolve the issue...

I know for me, I keep my browser instance open for several days (often more then a week at a time) with several tabs, and rarely have an issue with the memory going over 800MB. Even having multiple html5 videos playing, my memory rarely becomes an issue (I've had up to 5 twitch streams open on source and never had an issue; can't do more due to bandwidth constraints).

Well it started when I upgraded to firefox 56. I had not installed any new extensions though to wit some may have updated. It's all water under the bridge now though for me because I am using the ESR and will likely be staying on it for a while due to the webextension situation. As suggested by other posters the ESR is safer than running Fx 56 due to support and security upgrades well into 2018.

Also due to the release of Fx 57 any extensions which were (if) leaking would likely be obsolete for everyone but those using the ESR anyway. It's a weird time right now with the state of Firefox releases.

[bunder]

Firefox has been leaky for years, I can get it to 1gb usage with just 4 tabs, sometimes even less. I just restart it every few days.

[Zucca]

Firefox has been leaky for years, I can get it to 1gb usage with just 4 tabs, sometimes even less. I just restart it every few days. :(

Let's hope servo fixes things.