Firefox memory usage increases to point of no response

I ran firefox 2.0.0.4+1-0ubuntu1 on an iMac 20" on the same website as the Original Poster. I have 1GB RAM, 3GB swap space. Here is some memory use statistics I gathered whilst visitng http://www.virginradio.co.uk/listen/

Time Memory usage (%)
(mins) RAM Swap

0 29 1
10 36 1
20 97 46
30 91 50

At 31 minutes, Firefox suddenly started consuming memory rapidly, and promptly crashed.

I have also experienced a similar problem listening to www.icebergradio.com when using the flash based music player. Over a period of time my ram creeps up to a larger and larger amount in firefox. 1.64 GB. Eventually causing the player to crash or the music to cut out. This is on Gutsy 7.1 as of mon 13 of Aug 2007. I've also checked the browser memory cache, but changing the limit has had no effect. Not sure if this is a flash based problem, or if it's related to firefox? Shockwave Flash 9.0 r48

Thank you for your report and sorry for this late response.

I can confirm this behavior (though it doesn't crash for me). The versions I've tested are Feisty's firefox 2.0.0.6+1-0ubuntu1 and flashplugin-nonfree 9.0.48.0.0ubuntu1~7.04.1.

Here is the growing of memory usage as per top's output:

- Just after loading the web page:
  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
28276 hjmf 15 0 180m 38m 20m T 25 3.8 0:02.57 firefox-bin

- After 10 minutes (aprox.):
  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
28276 hjmf 16 0 243m 102m 25m S 13 10.2 1:00.66 firefox-bin

- After 15 minutes (aprox.):
  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
28276 hjmf 15 0 522m 333m 25m S 17 33.0 1:55.73 firefox-bin

- After 20 minutes (aprox.):
  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
28276 hjmf 15 0 1599m 828m 10m S 19 82.0 2:46.35 firefox-bin

- After 25 minutes (aprox.):
  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
28276 hjmf 16 0 2530m 831m 14m R 24 82.2 4:01.16 firefox-bin

After that time there is no appreciable memory growth.

I have seen firefox using up to 520MB. Something needs to be done about this. Firefox has had a memory leak for as long as I can remember. It seems the developers don't care.

On Thu, Nov 29, 2007 at 02:00:35AM -0000, curtiswtaylorjr wrote:
> I have seen firefox using up to 520MB. Something needs to be done about
> this. Firefox has had a memory leak for as long as I can remember. It
> seems the developers don't care.
>

Could you please check if firefox-3.0 beta1/2 in hardy still shows
this memory leak?

 - Alexander

I don't do alpha testing only beta up and hardy is still in alpha. I will respond if this ticket is still open at the time hardy reaches beta stages.

I'm seeing Firefox occupying increasing memory every time I go to a new site, as if it was caching it in RAM, but not freeing it when I leave and close the window. This is new behavior, -maybe- only after upgrading to 9.04, or latest Firefox upgrade. It'll go to the point of filling my 4 GB RAM, then apparently start thrashing the swap file, with Firefox essentially frozen. Only way to get RAM back is to close Firefox, watch cleanup run and RAM return to normal ( < 500 MB used, no swap. )

It's "only" a performance annoyance, but as a 40+ year programmer I'm inclined to view it as a probable indication of a serious problem in Firefox or it's interface with memory management.

Sorry, forgot to include specific package IDs:

Firefox 3.0.11
Mozilla Firefox for Ubuntu, canonical - 1.0

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060309 Ubuntu/9.04 (jaunty) Firefox/3.0.11

I too have been plagued by this bug for months, but I think I have something (useful) to add.
It doesn't seem to matter how many tabs I have open, but if YahooMail is one of them, I experience the following:
Memory use gradually creeps (about 5MB/min) until it maxes out (2GB), then the swap starts growing. Once the available RAM approaches 0, the system becomes terribly unresponsive.

However, if I close YahooMail, there is no noticeable increase in memory use after leaving Firefox open overnight.

Firefox 3.0.12
Ubuntu 8.10

Hope that helps!

Ubuntu 7.04, 7.10, 8.10 and 9.04 are no longer supported. If this is still occurring with Firefox 7.0.1 please open a new bug. According to Mozilla, they have done considerable work to improve memory management in Firefox 7.