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Bug 449113

Summary:	Firefox 3 fsync excessively and ui freezes
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5	Reporter:	Jeff Bastian <jbastian>
Component:	firefox	Assignee:	Gecko Maintainer <gecko-bugs-nobody>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	QA Contact:	desktop-bugs <desktop-bugs>
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	5.2	CC:	amlau, jburke, tao
Target Milestone:	rc	Keywords:	Reopened
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:	3.0.1	Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2008-07-18 13:55:56 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Jeff Bastian 2008-05-30 14:16:33 UTC

+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #439908 +++

Description of problem:
Firefox 3 uses sqlite for storage of information like history, bookmarks, etc.
They used to use async i/o, but ran into corruption issues. So they went with
sync i/o which blocks very easily.

Sqlite runs six fsyncs per transaction for history changes. History changes
happen ever time you go to a new page. If you are doing something else on the
system like say a kernel compile, virtual machine image creation, or anything
i/o intensive then the Firefox gui freezes, because it is waiting on the fsync
to finish. I have seen this take literally a minute. Someone in the upstream bug
documented this taking 30 seconds.

The change was introduced in Firefox 3 beta 3. Before then it was async i/o.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
firefox-3.0-0.beta5.6.el5

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install Firefox
2. Start Firefox
3. Do something i/o intensive
4. Load new pages
  
Actual results:
Firefox's ui freezes completely till the fsync completes

Expected results:
Firefox's ui doesn't freeze

Additional info:
The Mozilla developers have said they doesn't consider this a big issue, but for
me it makes Firefox 3 unusable. They have also said they don't plan to fix it
till after the 3.0 release, maybe not till 3.1.

Comment 1 Jeff Bastian 2008-05-30 14:20:29 UTC

Some discussion and workarounds:

http://jasondclinton.livejournal.com/66509.html 
http://jasondclinton.livejournal.com/66631.html

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=421482

Comment 2 Matěj Cepl 2008-05-30 15:15:23 UTC

We are following the bug in the upstream bugzilla no. 421482 very carefully, and
it is most likely that any relevant patch will be applied.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 439908 ***

Comment 3 Jeff Bastian 2008-05-30 15:24:14 UTC

Re-opening bug.  This BZ is for RHEL 5 tracking.  Bug 439908 is for Fedora rawhide.

Comment 4 Matěj Cepl 2008-05-30 15:25:13 UTC

Yes, sorry, I missed that IssueTracker number. Will fix.

Comment 6 RHEL Program Management 2008-06-02 19:56:16 UTC

This request was evaluated by Red Hat Product Management for inclusion in a Red
Hat Enterprise Linux maintenance release.  Product Management has requested
further review of this request by Red Hat Engineering, for potential
inclusion in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Update release for currently deployed
products.  This request is not yet committed for inclusion in an Update
release.

Comment 8 Martin Stransky 2008-07-18 13:55:56 UTC

Should be fixed now.