Massive memory leak in unity-panel-service and hud-service when invoking the hud on certain Firefox Profiles

[Sam_]

This is a follow-up of bug 964893.

unity-panel-service and hud-service quickly racks up memory until I kill it when invoking the HUD on my friend's Firefox profile. My profile is not affected. It's taking anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour, but it grounds the system to a halt once it clogs up enough.

1. run Firefox in the foreground
2. hit Alt to bring up HUD
3. type any text
4. select one proposal from HUD

Creating and using a new profile presents no memory leaks of this sort, so it is dependent on certain factors of one's profile.

Workaround is to kill HUD by pid which will settle everything to normal values.

The issue only correlates with firefox. GEdit, libreoffice, totem and others aren't affected.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: unity 5.10.0-0ubuntu6
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-24.37-generic 3.2.14
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-24-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu6
Architecture: amd64
CompizPlugins: [core,composite,opengl,imgjpeg,decor,regex,text,move,winrules,compiztoolbox,mousepoll,vpswitch,gnomecompat,obs,imgpng,grid,cube,place,resize,ring,workarounds,scale,screenshot,expo,rotate,ezoom,unitymtgrabhandles,unityshell]
Date: Thu Apr 26 23:08:44 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Alpha amd64 (20120204)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=C
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: unity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

Can you use valgrind to generate debug info so that we can investigate this issue?

[Sam_ (and-sam)]

Bilal, valgrind needs a <program> but leaks are from processes invoked by a shortcut.
Anyway after pressing alt-key I ran smaps and pmap with pid of hud- and unity-service, log files attached, hope they give a clue.

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

Charles, can you analyze these files and see what you can make out of those?

[M8R-6ct62c (m8r-6ct62c)]

Same problem here. Firefox stops responding for 30 seconds or so. I have a bunch of bookmarks.

WORKAROUND:
-Go into the 'privacy' settings of ubuntu and
-disable tracking for websites
-and add firefox as an app to ignore
-log out/in

That seems to have solved it for me.