High CPU usage while visiting Facebook

[Diwaker Gupta]

Binary package hint: firefox-3.0

Since the past two weeks or so, Firefox consumes a LOT of CPU (upwards of 50-60% on both CPUs on a dual core machine) when visiting Facebook. I haven't experienced this problem on any other website, but it is highly likely that this is not something unique to Facebook. I'm not sure exactly what the problem is -- whether it is some Javascript or Flash or what. Even when I am on an empty page (no applications etc), the CPU usage still remains high.

On doing a top, I see that the CPU is actually being consumed by the X process and not just by Firefox. But it is certainly driven by Firefox since closing the Facebook tab fixes the problem. I'm seeing X consuming around 45% CPU and Firefox another 20% consistently.

I tried doing an strace and it was largely filled with gettimeofday() calls. I can attach a detailed log if required, but I couldn't immediately see anything relevant in the strace output.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu Jul 24 21:45:32 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia fglrx
Package: firefox-3.0 3.0.1+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.2
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=.:/home/username/local/bin:/usr/bin:/home/username/software/forrest//bin:/home/username/software/utils/:/home/username/.kde/bin:/usr/games/:/usr/local/kde/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/var/lib/gems/1.8/bin/
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-20-generic i686

[Devin Kennedy (drk35)]

Same problem here. Appears to be an issue when Shockwave Flash 10.0.0 d525 and http://www.facebook.com/swf/SoundPlayer.swf come into contact with each other, because the following two independent actions fix the problem for me:

1. Reverting back to Flash 9.0 r124

OR

2. Staying with Flash 10.0.0 d525, but blocking the aforementioned SWF file with Adblock.

[Diwaker Gupta (diwaker)]

@David: Thanks, you are absolutely right. (2) fixes my problem for now.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.