[intrepid] firefox uses 100% cpu when editing wikipedia/mediawiki pages

[Gavin McCullagh]

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

It's possible this is related to bug 185469, or that the wikipedia editor has a bug, I'm unsure.

When I choose to edit some wikipedia pages, firefox initially performs fine but as time goes on it begins to respond more and more slowly. It uses 100% cpu. If I move to another window and back again, I can end up waiting 30 seconds for the firefox window to repaint. After a bit of this, I generally end up killing firefox and restarting it, recovering the previous session (thankfully that works and doesn't lose my edits). I can avoid killing firefox if I regularly choose to "show preview", ie to submit changes and load a new page.

One wikipedia page which I edit that shows this regularly (5-6 times last night) is:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mountjoy_Square

I have experienced this regularly on my laptop (a Dell Latitude, more details to come) but now that I'm trying to reproduce it on my desktop, I'm not seeing the issue. I'm not sure if this is due to less actual editing or if there's something different about the hardware. Both machines run pretty standard up to date installs of intrepid.

I will try and revert with more detail,
Gavin

[Gavin McCullagh (gmccullagh)]

I've just been repeating the problem. It's not difficult on my laptop (a dell latitude d410).

gavinmc@bambi:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev d3)
00:1e.2 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1e.3 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5751 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 01)
02:01.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI6515 Cardbus Controller
02:01.5 Communication controller: Texas Instruments PCI6515 SmartCard Controller
02:03.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG [Calexico2] Network Connection (rev 05)

It turns out that it happens with launchpad too, if I stay on an edit page too long. Attached is a graph plotting the cpu usage of the firefox process when I just leave it on the edit page. As it began to dip, I switched to the firefox window and it began to climb again.

The plot is from the output of column 3 of "ps aux". top said it was at 99% cpu. Not sure what the difference is

Gavin

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue for you. Can you try with the latest version of Firefox 3.0? Thanks in advance.

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

[Gavin McCullagh (gmccullagh)]

Fair enough to close this. To be honest, I'd forgotten about the bug as it's a good long time since I'd seen it, and I edit data in mediawiki regularly. I'd say this is fixed now one way or another.