What is Digg?Warning: The Content in this Article May be Inaccurate
Readers have reported that this story contains information that may not be accurate.296 Comments
- DarkStalker, on 10/12/2007, -19/+268It's a reason to restart Firefox. It's their famous memory leak that they've been working on for ages.
- mojaam, on 10/12/2007, -4/+209A faster way to reach that much memory usage is to spend just a few minutes on myspace.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -13/+155Yup I've always had this issue when leaving it open for a long period of time. Opera and IE7 release their memory when you minimize them, however firefox doesn't do this by default. You need to tweak it to release its memory. To do this, type about:config in the address bar. Right click add a new boolean name it config.trim_on_minimize set it to true restart firefox, and memory leak free.
- shiftt, on 10/12/2007, -14/+107who the ***** still uses Frontpage?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -9/+80but, c'mon... restart windows? what are you on!?
- leobaby, on 10/12/2007, -41/+85This guy doesn't bother to list all of his extensions.
Stupid ass crap. No ***** digg. - raisinbran, on 10/12/2007, -2/+41Incredible. I too love Firefox, but I'm not blind to its faults.
This is something that needs to be fixed. - frofro, on 10/12/2007, -2/+39If it's Firefox that's leaking memory, then just restart Firefox rather than the entire OS.
- furan, on 10/12/2007, -5/+41The above post is incorrect. This will cause the working set to be trimmed, meaning any leaked memory will be paged to disk. The operating system will do this over time anyway, if the memory is truely leaked and the pages it occupies are not being touched. So the memory is not so much being reclaimed as paged out to disk, meaning it will occupy the page file for the lifetime of the process (and keep accumulating there as the leaked pages are paged out to disk).
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+40Then how does Opera and IE outperform Firefox in back/forward page rendering and NOT take up all your damn memory hm?? Let's call a spade a spade and stop being fanboys for a second shall we? This is a piss-poor design that they need to fix ASAP.
- dnthomps, on 10/12/2007, -7/+40This is not just with Firefox folks. This is with Mozilla in general. I know some of you use Thunderbird. I have it close it out just so my damn fan won't spin off the damn motor almost every day. Memory gets taxed to 100%. Come on Mozilla. Fix the leaks please!
- Sajentine, on 10/12/2007, -5/+37What has this got to do with restarting Windows everyday?
Restarting FF everyday, Yes.
The headline is inaccurate. - nx01, on 10/12/2007, -1/+33Problem is that Firefox caches it's image files from sites that you'ved surfed to in your current session. I remember reading on /. that this was considered a feature by the Mozilla Dev team, and is not going to be fixed as it (supposedly) speeds up browsing to sites you've been to. Problem is, it slows the damn machine down making it almost useless if you leave it open for too long.
- detonate, on 10/12/2007, -6/+34"if you just close firefox everytime you're done looking at something, you'll never have any problems."
Haha but I'm never done looking at something... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -11/+34Oh and BTW? Firefox does this in safemode too with NO extensions loaded. So it's NOT the extensions the Mozilla Dev team were so quickly to blame early on.
- garyh84, on 10/12/2007, -5/+23I use Windows Classic just because the colors in Windows XP hurt my eyes after a period of use.
- MartinSJacobson, on 10/12/2007, -4/+22he must be seriously exceeding his daily recommended pr0n intake!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -26/+43"Working on it"?!?!?
MY ASS!!!! They don't know how to fix it so they called it a "feature".
Unreal.
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009749.html - pardonmedoug, on 10/12/2007, -6/+23anybody else on whether the above recommendation by Rub3X is a good idea? any particular reason not to do it?
- OUPablo, on 10/12/2007, -31/+48Yeah, i have always noticed a problem with firefox. If i leave it open overnight, it will climb up to about 50 MB. But, if you just close firefox everytime you're done looking at something, you'll never have any problems. Just a question: why would you leave it open for a week?
- sdrawkcaB, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16Firefox is always using aorund 80 to 150 megs of my RAM, and sometimes hits up to 400! It would appear that it is more likely to use larger amounts the more RAM you have.
- cliffzdude, on 10/12/2007, -7/+22I have been a zilla fan for years, I've used and recommended firefox since the beginning. That said, I love Firefox. But its performance has been degrading for a few months now with each new release. Of course you have to keep up for security's sake. As a test I uninstalled the most current Firefox, which -seems- to crash more than it used to. I then installed an older version I found sitting on our file server. Alas, it ran rock solid with not a single crash. Ahhh, the Firefox I grew to love. Fast and stable. Of course I went back to the most current release for the sake of security... My guess is (just a guess) the Firefox gang have had to push out some security changes without time to work on the stability issues, like the memory leak.
I'm absolutely certain the Firefox gang will get this back up on track, such has been their history and I expect nothing less from this great group of developers.
..still using Firefox, still loving it. - diggory, on 10/12/2007, -53/+67No, don't restart Windows...*re-install* WIndows. That solves most problems for me. I recommend doing it a couple of times a week.
- TiMMY8765, on 10/12/2007, -6/+19I was using an alpha build and it took up 900 MB after 2 hours
- cliffzdude, on 10/12/2007, -12/+24Quit hassling the guy for having FrontPage opened, I note an ethereal Quick Launch so he may not be all that bad.
Front Page is great for internal use by administrative assistants. My guess is the guy may support those who use Front Page. Just a guess, but why the hell give somebody a wrath of ***** when he has a program open and we do not KNOW WHY he uses it? - habitat2050, on 10/12/2007, -7/+19just close firefox, problem solved
- blueigloo, on 10/12/2007, -6/+17ewww FrontPage and McAfee! ;-)
- maninblac1, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13Obviously this wasn't a laptop, but i've seen firefox users who haven't closed their browsers have dozens of tabs open and haven't restarted their computers for weeks or months. They just close the lid and hibernate their machine.
- thechadnz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11LOL @ having to restart windows...
OMG APACHE IS USING LOTS OF RAM RESTART FEDORA!!! - clinko, on 10/12/2007, -13/+23"This is why you should restart Windows everyday, folks."
How do you consider yourself computer literate? Have you used a PC with XP yet? I know, it's relatively new, I'm waiting until it gets out of beta too...
oh wait, it's been around for 6 years, and I haven't had it crash yet... - vermin, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14Then how does Opera manage to cache pages/images that reload instantaneously and they have no memory leaks.
- rauz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13It's "Lo and behold". Sorry :)
- Wilson, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11I hit 1GB after ~24 hours a week ago, but it hasn't happen since (an extension upgrade may have fixed it):
http://steven.wilson.googlepages.com/firefoxmem.png - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10@shinynew
My God thats ugly!!! - shinynew, on 10/12/2007, -14/+23it was the final reason for me to switch to opera. I may switch back to firefox when they fix it, but opera is acually very nice, even without all my extentions.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+15"Warning: The Content in this Article May be Inaccurate [and has been reported only by fanboys]"
- psychicfriend, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9I un-digged this story as inaccurate. Firefox is definitely a memory-leaking pig (albeit one i prefer to IE6), however the problem is incorrectly attributable to Windows, which I have kept running for months on end without a restart under heavy use.
- Majdaa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I'd just like to point out that Safari is notorious for memory leaks too, not that i'm a mac basher or anything, but i've got safari up to 400mb
- brundlefly76, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Its really funny because when Firefox first came out, it was touted as the 'lean and mean' fast browser vs. IE feature bloat.
Now its exactly the opposite, Firefox is the slow and bloated browser while IE and Opera are much faster and leaner.
Open sourcers are just as fickle marketers as any company, if not more.
That said, I wouldnt give up any of my Firefox features for anything!! - TheG2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Wow, the propaganda has hit you really hard hasn't it.
- OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -4/+111.5 GB in a week? I can cause that to happen within a couple of hours, maybe less.
Firefox doesn't handle Windows Media and Flash too well. It also doesn't handle pics very well, especially hi-res pics. Every time you open graphic-intensive pages, Firefox leaks memory. The WMP plugin itself is extremely touchy. Click on something at the wrong time while it's running and it crashes and burns.
I wish the devs would stop denying that the memory leak is happening and do something about it. - Soulhuntre, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Of course if this was happening in IE the FF fanbois would be whining that a extension shouldn't be able to cause these kind of problems and blaming MS anyway.
And to prove how clever they were, they would spell MS with a $ and work in a chair throwing reference. - futureundead, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7An earlier poster asked why one would want to keep a browser open for long periods of time. Answer: because there are things you want to read, or things you can't get to right now, that you want to eventually. I know, everyone will reply, "bookmarks!", but have you taken the time to look through your bookmarks lately? How much crap is in there that you haven't checked in months?
Personally, I leave a window open because I'm more often than not surfing for some bit of information or another at some point in the day, and it is not uncommon for me to note 400-700 megs of memory use; which is why I shut it down when playing any games (the Session Manager extension is quite nice, especially for those occasional crashes). - war2d2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Yeah, I love FF and all, but that's not windows' fault. I haven't restarted my dev box at work since the last round of patches, and before that the previous restart was from the patch a couple months before that. I think I've had to restart about 3 times this year, that I can recall. I've never noticed any slowdown.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I'll use a Mac when I can physically build one to my liking, therefore avoiding the nasty OEM taxes and performance problems from out-of-the-box vendors like Dell and Gateway. Also their limited hardware selections that result from them cutting deals with Intel and/or AMD and junky motherboard manufacturers are a huge drawback 90% of the time.
Apple got it right when they licensed the OS and hardware to third parties, but since their competitors were alot smarter with business, it nearly killed them. I seriously doubt we will ever see the day you can just 'build' a MacOS PC for any number of reasons. Therefore, I can honestly state that I'll probably never own a Mac. - pillfred, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Very true indeed.
- kettlechips, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Look what you've done, you made me use the bury button!
- WaterDragon, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10@ furan..
CAN you please explain that a little further, for us non-coders?
"The above post is incorrect. This will cause the working set to be trimmed, meaning any leaked memory will be paged to disk. The operating system will do this over time anyway, if the memory is truely leaked and the pages it occupies are not being touched. So the memory is not so much being reclaimed as paged out to disk, meaning it will occupy the page file for the lifetime of the process (and keep accumulating there as the leaked pages are paged out to disk)."
ARE you saying that the above procedure will free up RAM, but will remain in the paging file for awhile, using up harddrive? (...My guess)
If so, isn't that enormously better.
It's getting so bad lately, i was thinking of going and buying some more RAM.
So what is your reason why we shouldn't apply the above strategy?
Thanks. - yuutomo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6and I have had Firefox open and running for a month and it's using 48MB total.
- Rickler, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I wish windows forced its users to use a cheap looking brushed metal theme with shinny plastic buttons everywhere.
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