Firefox = giant memory hog, slows system down

[Mathilda Hartnell]

Binary package hint: firefox-3.5

Firefox 3.5 (the build that comes with Karmic Koala) is hogging the whole system, stops responding randomly, hogs memory and CPU.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Nov 1 23:28:45 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
Package: firefox-3.5 3.5.3+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu6
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: firefox-3.5
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic i686

[Mathilda Hartnell (nekkoru)]

This is fixed somewhat by installing the latest updates from Mozilla's website or through Update Manager.

[ldlandis (ldlandis)]

Before and after restarting... same tabs open...
After restarting, back to crisp response.

Tasks: 158 total, 3 running, 153 sleeping, 2 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 98.0%us, 2.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 0.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 1543644k total, 1005512k used, 538132k free, 55256k buffers
Swap: 4200988k total, 10776k used, 4190212k free, 287452k cached

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
 2702 ldl 20 0 1078m 424m 40m R 98.0 28.2 215:35.75 firefox
 1606 root 20 0 101m 58m 9512 S 1.7 3.9 78:21.35 Xorg
 4910 ldl 20 0 100m 10m 8908 S 0.3 0.7 36:34.94 pulseaudio
    1 root 20 0 2528 1316 1016 S 0.0 0.1 0:01.03 init
    2 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd

top - 20:44:37 up 3 days, 5:41, 5 users, load average: 1.39, 1.97, 2.74
Tasks: 175 total, 4 running, 152 sleeping, 2 stopped, 17 zombie
Cpu(s): 92.4%us, 5.9%sy, 0.0%ni, 0.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.7%hi, 1.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 1543644k total, 939876k used, 603768k free, 75356k buffers
Swap: 4200988k total, 10776k used, 4190212k free, 378188k cached

  PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
 2955 ldl 20 0 548m 236m 30m R 93.0 15.7 0:23.26 firefox
 1606 root 20 0 100m 56m 7488 R 3.6 3.8 78:37.55 Xorg
 1979 root 35 15 4892 3116 768 R 1.0 0.2 8:00.12 preload
 4915 ldl 20 0 7960 4928 2116 S 1.0 0.3 0:22.44 gconfd-2
 6012 ldl 20 0 126m 21m 12m S 0.3 1.4 3:06.27 gnome-terminal
    1 root 20 0 2528 1316 1016 S 0.0 0.1 0:01.03 init

[Finog (finog)]

If any information is needed to help diagnose this, let me know.