Is it possible to find out which tab of firefox is consuming so muchCPU?

English Applications
#1

Hi,

Normally I have many tabs opened in Firefox. I don’t know how many,
eventually it could be a hundred. Not all are really loaded, tabs do not
load content till you click on them at least once. On firefox start,
only the displayed tab, one per window, actually loads.

So, my normal CPU load for firefox is under 8%. But sometimes it soars,
and it keeps high for hours. Like now, it is using 33%.

The typical culprit is flash, so I routinely block all flash (with
flashblock), till I click on the box and tell it load it. If not, I can
kill its separate process (you see them displaying “ps afxu”).

But sometimes it is not flash, it is something else.

It may be an animated graphic.

Or it may be a script on some page.

So, the question is, how do I locate the specific tab or site that is
overloading firefox, so to close it, or block scripts on it, or one
scrip specifically?

The idea is to find out first which one is the culprit.

…]

I just used the “H” key on top, to show threads. I am seeing something
named “Media State” and another “Media Decode”, at relatively high CPU.
I don’t recall seeing them previously. Their PID changes continuously,
so I can’t see what started them. And I can’t find a file by that name.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)

#2

(stupid web site deleted my answer again, and then complained it was too short! anyway…)

Is there an FF extension called anything like ‘CPU Usage viewer’? There is one of those for Opera.

#3

On 2014-04-10 11:36, Obscurant wrote:
>
> (stupid web site deleted my answer again, and then complained it was
> too short! anyway…)
>
> Is there an FF extension called anything like ‘CPU Usage viewer’? There
> is one of those for Opera.

Ah. Thanks. Should have thought of that.

However, when I search for “CPU Usage viewer” I get 61 hits, with names like

+++···········
Zen Broadband Usage Viewer
PDF Viewer No Restart
XML Viewer
Google Docs Viewer (PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, etc…)
···········+±

which obviously are not related at all. Sometimes I hate search engines…

Looked up those 61 by sight, none is relevant.

Now I search for “CPU load”, 21 hits.

+++···········
Extended Statusbar 1.5.8 by Strahinja Kustudić

A Statusbar with speed, percentage, time and loaded size (similar to
Opera’s one)
···········+±

Doesn’t seem to be it. “CPU” finds even fewer hits.

+++···········
GreenFox 0.3 by frinux
GreenFox, Green Code Lab Firefox AddOn. Measure easily your CPU consumption.
···········+±

But I find no info on it, the site is in French and many pages.

Nope, no luck finding an add on that at least appears to do something
likie what I want.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)

#4

Although I don’t personally use it, all Developers install and use the Firebug plugin(for Firefox), it’s the most popular browser debugger.

Personally I do all my debugging using the Chrome browser (applies to all Chrome family like Chromium and Canary), if the same behavior can be observed in Chrome, just prest CTL-SHFT-J to launch the debugger pane (of course <before> your suspect browser activity). Displays just about anything and everything you want/need.

HTH,
TSU

#5

On 2014-04-11 20:26, tsu2 wrote:
>
> Although I don’t personally use it, all Developers install and use the
> Firebug plugin(for Firefox), it’s the most popular browser debugger.
>
> Personally I do all my debugging using the Chrome browser (applies to
> all Chrome family like Chromium and Canary), if the same behavior can be
> observed in Chrome, just prest CTL-SHFT-J to launch the debugger pane
> (of course <before> your suspect browser activity). Displays just about
> anything and everything you want/need.

The “before” thing is a problem :slight_smile:

I simply started closing tabs, and eventually CPU decreased. But I could
not pinpoint which one was the culprit, because there is a CPU spike
when a tab is closed, and because apparently it was not a single tab.

FF is now under 4% most of the time.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)