Website makes computer hang and firefox crash

[François Cauwe]

Binary package hint: firefox

Setup:
 * Ubuntu 7.10 D600 laptop with 1.2 GB ram and 512 MB swap
 * Firefox 2.0.0.12 without addons

How to reproduce:
 * got to http://electrons.psychogenic.com/
 * open a couple of pages in tabs of this site (in my case 4-5 tabs)

Problem:
 * Computer start to swap really heavily, hangs and is unresponsive (Denial of Service)

Cause :
 * When the page is fully loaded, it starts some kind of javascript that uses _a lot of memory_

Expected behaviour:
 * Limit the usage of memory used by a script.
 * Or: Ask if a script can use more memory
 * something else than making my computer hang

Some numbers:
1 page loaded: 370 MB
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
fcauwe 6370 8.8 21.3 370308 276476 ? Sl 22:52 0:15 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin
2 pages loaded: 831 MB (= 370 MB + 461 MB)
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
fcauwe 6370 9.6 56.9 831624 737792 ? Sl 22:52 0:20 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin
2 pages with javascript disabled: 170 MB
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
fcauwe 6370 7.6 3.9 173940 50960 ? Sl 22:52 0:32 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox-bin

 * Your computer start to swap heavily ...

Prob

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Mar 15 23:01:12 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.10
Package: firefox 2.0.0.12+2nobinonly+2-0ubuntu0.7.10
PackageArchitecture: i386
SourcePackage: firefox
Uname: Linux Titan 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Tue Feb 12 07:42:25 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

[LimCore (limcore)]

For me, on Ubuntu 64 on amd64, opening this page takes ~300 mb of memory then running firefox with other pages ; But opening it more times (i.e. in tabs of same window) do not increase the memory usage

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Sat, Apr 05, 2008 at 01:07:50AM -0000, LimCore wrote:
> For me, on Ubuntu 64 on amd64, opening this page takes ~300 mb of memory
> then running firefox with other pages ; But opening it more times (i.e.
> in tabs of same window) do not increase the memory usage
>

firefox 2 reaches end of life soon and wont see any non-critical fixes
anymore.

 status wontfix

 - Alexander