Description of problem: I you open a big/heavy/etc page in firefox, and then move away from it, it stays in memory. big pages is also slow to load (seems exponentially - the "load percentage" bar in lower rigth corner goes slower and slower and slower...) Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): firefox-1.1-0.2.7.deerpark.alpha2.1 How reproducible: Every time Steps to Reproduce: 1.Enter a huge page. Example: http://folk.uio.no/~kyrrens/primes.txt (its a 6 MB pure-ascii file) 2.Wait untill its loaded (and be happy you didn't show firefox the 1GB version with much more numbers :P ). Notice memory consumption rising in the gnome-system-monitor panel-applet 3.Visit another page. I tried slashdot. 4.Notice that memory usage doesn't drop. 5.Close firefox. Computer churns, a bit. Suddenly you have a lot of free memory. Actual results: Memory leak Expected results: Not cache *everything*? I dont think it even drops when you close the tab it is kept in... Additional info:
Any better with latest rawhide?
I'm not shure. It does *not* release any RAM when i open another tab with a ligther site (such as slashdot :P), and then close the mega-tab, and it does release a lot of ram when firefox is closed. But this is 128 MB system, so "a lot of ram" is... relative. Just switch on gnome-system-monitor panel applet, activate memory and swap display, and try yourself. When that is said, i think i remember it used even *more* RAM before than now - the increase in ram usage when i load up the page is really barely visible (the time consumption is not - and judging by the network and cpu activity, rendering is what takes time, not downloading (this is a 600 mhz pentium 3 mobility)
I'm seeing this problem too. I am using Fedora 7 Test 2 with the latest updates and firefox 2.0.0.2-1.fc7. I can reproduce it when visiting web pages with lots of images, it seems to be using the X server memory to store images but it doesn't free them when I close the tab or go to any other site, it just keeps them in memory forever. I'll attach 2 gnome-system-monitor screen shots to show the problem. My system is an Athlon 2000 XP with 512 megs of RAM and 512 megs of swap, I would say this is more than enough to run a few programs but with firefox things get very tight. This is a very old problem with firefox IMHO.
Created attachment 149231 [details] firefox using a lot of memory This shows how much memory firefox use when browsing site with lots of pictures (not all that much really). Specially the X server memory, just look the two first items of the list.
Created attachment 149232 [details] g-s-m after closing firefox This one shows the X server memory after closing firefox, there were a lot of RAM and swap freed. During this I got to 99% of RAM and 99% of swap... and remember, I have 512 of RAM and 512 of swap. Obviously I was running pirut and gnome-terminal but that shouldn't put my system near to an OOM situation.
We just updated the Firefox version in Fedora/development from 2.0 to a 3.0 pre-release version, which improves performance, memory usage, and fixes many bugs and crashes. Closing as CANTFIX since we aren't fixing bugs filed against 2.0 now that 3.0 is in. If this bug is still present in rawhide using a Firefox 3.0 version, please re-open this bug. Thanks and Happy Holidays