firefox 3.0.9 and facebook
Monday, 27 April 2009 4:27 pm by noelposted in tech | tags: facebook, firefox, linux
it was just a hunch that i’ve been meaning to dive into for a couple of days now. when i’m on facebook, the memory footprint of firefox gets larger and larger until i reach that point where i am forced to close firefox (or kill the process). i do have several tabs open at the same time–besides facebook i am also accessing my mail, this blog, slashdot, a news site, a bike forum, flickr and ubuntu forums, just to name a handful. so it was hard to pin down the culprit to just one site.
this morning i decided to experiment. from a fresh boot:
- start firefox
- log on to facebook only (defaults to my profile)
- click on home
- click on a friend’s profile
- click on home
- click on another friend’s profile
- click on home
- click on a third friend’s profile
- click on home
in the memory and swap history section, each step corresponds to each visit to my 'home' page in facebook
i waited for the browser to finish loading each page before moving on and clicking on the next. by the fourth visit to my home page the browser started to get sluggish and it popped a warning (second image) saying that there is an unresponsive script on the page and it is offering either to let the script continue or to stop it. i opted to stop the script and close the browser. the first image shows an increase in memory usage each time the home page in facebook is revisited. by the fourth visit the swap memory has started to increase as well.
i also found out that closing the browser tab where facebook is assigned does not free the memory it used. that can only be accomlished by closing the browser itself.
this may be the script that's allocating all that memory.
i’m not sure which is really the culprit but i’m leaning more on firefox’s memory handling. i do not remember the previous versions being this bad at handling memory. but then again facebook may be using a new script for the user’s home page.
i’m just hoping it gets fixed. soon.
27 April 2009 10:06 pm at 10:06 pm
I’ve had this exact problem since last Friday. I was so glad to find your blog! Now I know it isn’t just me.
28 April 2009 2:53 am at 2:53 am
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I thought it was my laptop on the blink! It’s good to hear that I am not the only person with this problem. Let’s hope it gets fixed soon
28 April 2009 6:15 am at 6:15 am
I have a very similar issue but it began a week or two ago before the latest firefox update I think, I can log in but almost as soon as I do I get that script error you mention, then if I attempt to browse to another profile the browser freezes and begins to chew memory at a crazy rate, I can’t use facebook at all now with firefox and its also acting pretty strangely on IE8 and Chrome….
29 April 2009 12:51 am at 12:51 am
I have had the same issue with 3.0.8, upgraded to 3.0.10 today, we’ll see what happens.
29 April 2009 8:55 am at 8:55 am
same thing. i’ll post screenshots again in a bit…
29 May 2009 4:58 am at 4:58 am
I have the exact same issue and googled firefox+facebook+memory+hole
This is insane, I noticed this problem is hugely magnified when you leave a comment open and let it sit there before clicking submit.
My memory spikes as high as 650,000k and must be crashed in order for me to do anything on the computer.
This can also be with less than 4-5 tabs open.
Highly annoying, I have been keeping chrome open separately just for FaceBook usage.
14 June 2009 4:10 pm at 4:10 pm
i recently downloaded and tested firefox 3.0.11 on facebook and it seems that its a little more stable and the .9 and .10 releases. i haven’t hung the browser after the seventh visit to my facebook ‘home’ page. i’ll do a test later and maybe post the screenshot of the memory footprint also.
4 July 2009 6:06 pm at 6:06 pm
i hv the same problm in firefox 3.5….
wat to do???
3 September 2009 8:46 pm at 8:46 pm
I had the same problem. It’s a memory leak problem.
I hope this link could be useful for you, too:
http://blog.skdev.net/2009/02/12/how-to-fix-firefox-memory-leak-problem/
3 September 2009 8:57 pm at 8:57 pm
thanks riccardo, i will try this solution in my version 3.0.13 version of firefox. for the version 3.5.x series i have not had the same problem although it does seem that firefox is still leaking memory. thanks for visiting and for taking the time.
3 September 2009 9:36 pm at 9:36 pm
I checked link I posted few minutes ago and it’s unreachable now.
3 September 2009 11:02 pm at 11:02 pm
no worries, mate. i checked the site and its still up. but i’ll keep an eye on the link you gave for the next couple of days. i did copy and paste the text you sent me so i will copy it here again if that link goes south. thanks!
4 September 2009 4:06 am at 4:06 am
I have had this same exact problem, especially under Linux when using both IceWeasel (under Debian) and when using generic Firefox (even 3.5!)
Facebook.com is the worst culprit that truly shows this error and I have been severely suffering under this awful pall of memory leak horror for months and months now and i thought it was just my broken Debian system so I reformatted and reinstalled everything fresh and when i went back to use Facebook under a brand new fresh clean install, THIS PROBLEM STILL SHOWED UP! So I am trying the solution posted on the linked SKDev.net blog now, crossing my fingers and praying to God that this works!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH in advance!!!!