Firefox: Its terrible...

English Open Chat
#1

I use FF for all the web related stuffs. No other browser. i know, when using flash, videos takes a lot of memory in FF. But this is really terrible. FF is using 1.7GB of the memory out of 3.8GB.
Overall memory used is 3.4, around 1GB is cached.

I am running just 4 tabs, one of them is yahoo mail, other three are simple sites(opensuse forum included).

http://thumbnails14.imagebam.com/4555/81f69a45549172.gif](http://www.imagebam.com/image/81f69a45549172)

Any of you facing this problem of memory with FF?
FF 3.5.2 here with 32bit openSUSE11.1.
Can some body explain the cache usage in detail.

Thanks.

#2

Hi
Don’t see anywhere near that in Gnome 11.2 with 3.5.2 maybe it’s a
preload issue with 11.1? What is the RSS figure?


PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
4682 xxxxxxxx  20   0  331m  94m  28m S    4  4.7   0:59.01  firefox

xxxxxxx@mizz-piggy:~$ free
total       used       free     shared    buffers
cached Mem:       2045580     989432    1056148          0
42504     522916 -/+ buffers/cache:     424012    1621568
Swap:      2104504          0    2104504

On the 11.1 partition I’m just running the standard version :frowning:

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 5 (i586) Kernel 2.6.31-rc5-git3-2-desktop
up 0:55, 2 users, load average: 0.25, 0.22, 0.13
ASUS eeePC 1000HE ATOM N280 1.66GHz | GPU Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME

#3

Hi,

This is what free saying:

anl@linux-aqc9:~> free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       3994464    3551260     443204          0     148172     987444
-/+ buffers/cache:    2415644    1578820
Swap:      4192924          0    4192924

RSS figure?

#4

Hi
In that image, the second line says RSS Memory Usage… Also I see
Mplayer is a zombie, many more like that?

Seems strange the report from the GUI though, what about when you run
top from the cli, do you see high usage from firefox?

You could also look at running vmstat 2 and see what occurs when you
start firefox up. The 2 will produce output every 2 seconds. Another
command is iostat for look at the hard drives.q

Maybe a post (or get this moved by a mod) to applications maybe better?

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.2 Milestone 5 (i586) Kernel 2.6.31-rc5-git3-2-desktop
up 2:47, 2 users, load average: 0.17, 0.19, 0.18
ASUS eeePC 1000HE ATOM N280 1.66GHz | GPU Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME

#5

To me that reads as 1.7GB of your 4GB is in use, not that FF is using 1.7GB!:open_mouth:

#6

mmarif4u adjusted his/her AFDB on Saturday 15 Aug 2009 18:36 to write:

> Can some body explain the cache usage in detail.
>
> Thanks.
>

http://www.faqs.org/docs/linux_admin/buffer-cache.html

buffers and cache make the system faster, unused memory is wasted memory and
just slows down access by having to get stuff from your drive.

Trust me if you disable the buffers and cache you “will” notice the
difference.

You can tune your kernel by changing the values in a non permanent way but
I will leave that up to you as if you make a wrong change then your system
can become unstable and need a reboot to get back to default.

Hint:

have a look in /proc/sys/

These are pseudo files and do not persist after a reboot, can be altered at
will but can b0rk your system temporarily.

http://www.linuxatemyram.com/play.html

Here is a good site with loads of info on the memory manager in the Linux
kernel:

http://linux-mm.org/

also there is an accepted application that is in the repos called prelink,
have a look at this to trim down the allocated memory on binaries but beware
it can cause probs, having said that I have used it for quite some time and
it runs automatically if I run SuSEconfig or update with YaST.

Usual disclaimer:

If you are going to tweak you kernel in anyway I will not be held
responsible if the computer eats your cat or a Perseid hits you outhouse and
creates a shower of $4!T then I deny all knowledge as this post was written
by a bot and not me, so there.

YMMV

HTH

Mark
Caveat emptor
Nullus in verba
Nil illegitimi carborundum

#7

Thanks to all for the replies.
@malcolmlewis: The result of the top and vmstat shows, the same progress as i tested it.
Seems like FF is memory hog in 11.1 for me.

@caf: I don’t think, that is the whole memory used by other applications too. The memory used that time except cache was around
2.4GB. In which 1.7 was for FF. The rest of 1GB was for Cache. so the total was 3.4/3.5 GB.

@baskitcaise: Thanks for the links, was really helpful to learn some thing new and increase the knowledge. I am not going to tweak the kernel for buffer/cache. i am fine with that. Just was in willing to know more about it. The problem for is the FF.

I did some test today, when i start FF, the memory usage was around 35Mib. Which is more than acceptable. After opening yahoo mail, gmail, some news site(No flash,audio,video), around 5/6 sites at that time, the memory usage for FF reaches to around 235Mib. which is still acceptable.

http://thumbnails.imagebam.com/4562/8082ee45615593.gif](http://www.imagebam.com/image/8082ee45615593)

But after 5/6 hours, the usage of FF memory reaches to 1.1GB with out any big site opened. Just few normal sites.

http://thumbnails.imagebam.com/4562/d893b045615594.gif](http://www.imagebam.com/image/d893b045615594)

FF is annoying…memory eater.
Any ideas to tweak this issues.
To mods: please move this thread to suitable section, if you think so.