Firefox, uses too much RAM, and now randomly crash when using thousands of tabs
I'm using thousands of tabs, of course with the option "don't load tabs until selected" activated so FF is supposed not to have to load really more content in memory compared if I was just opening one tab.
But my Firefox is using more than 2GB of memory just to boot up i.e. loading the list of the tabs with their little icon, a tab and the extensions. I tried to boot FF in "without modules" mode it doesn't even manage to boot. That was quite annoying but OK but now my ff is randomly CRASHING (I am probably around 3000 now) ! The memory problem is here for a lot of time but the crash is new but I believe it's more the tab number than the new version responsible for it.
I cleared cache and cookies, it doesn't solve anything.
How I'm suppose to solve this problem ? Just deleting my beloved tabs ?
I believe there's a deeper problem in the way Firefox manage "this unload until selected" option because it isn't acting as if theye were not here.
My system is otherwise quite stable except my system clock can go back in time a little bit, is it a possible reason for the crashes ? Is there an 'hardcoded' limit number of tabs opened ? Shall I post on Bugzilla where no one seems to listen to anything ? Or you just consider this a 'non normal usage' and do not even care ?
Thanks to anyone helping me and sorry for any mistake in english.
PS: FF lacks a simple way of knowing how many tabs you've got.
Modified by flofl0
All Replies (9)
Do not use thousands of tabs. Is Firefox then ok ?
Please Test this
by creating an extra new Firefox profile. Open Firefox as a test with that profile and browse normally for some time, but keep the number of open tabs down to a maximum of say 30 tabs.
- See Use the Profile Manager to create and remove Firefox profiles _creating-a-profile
You mention the figure 3000. Is that the number of tabs you have open ?
Make sure you back up your Firefox profile. Put the backup copy somewhere safe outside Firefox program or profile paths. Your Windows desktop is ok. We will do what we can to save your precious tabs.
- See instructions Back up and restore information in Firefox profilesw_backing-up-your-profile
I can makes some suggestions about tab use. And possibly help with crashes but first of all let's just see if everything is due to the number of tabs.
3000 tabs open is probably the main or even only problem here.
We agree on the origin of the problem of course, thanks to John99 for his advice about firefox profiles.
But that doesn't mean there's no problem ! So "you just consider this a 'non normal usage' and do not even care ? " is your answer ? It's a minor problem though because I can just use less tabs, but I think this problem underlines bugs or even code design problems that devs should think about.
"You mention the figure 3000. Is that the number of tabs you have open ?" Yes, may be closer to 2700 but no real way to know.
Is there any other possible reason except the number of tabs for my FF profile to be messed up that way ?
I tried a new profile (it looked all ugly without the modified zoom on the UI...) it took about 150MB to keep wikipedia and youtube (without any video started) open. Is it like on a normal install ?
Modified by flofl0
the average user appears to have just over 3 tabs open: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_hive/2010/12/open_this_story_in_a_new_tab.html ;-)
You can look at post(s) in this MozillaZine forum thread about extracting URLs from a sessionstore.js file.
You can try to tear off tabs to a new window to see if that works better or possibly use bookmark all tabs and organize them in folders that you can open with a middle-click.
It is not that we do not care. This is a support forum mainly answered by fellow users for solving end users problems.
It is not a forum that developers are likely to look at and does not discuss development issues and decisions. I do not think it is worth trying to file a bug in bugzilla.
- Any major enhancement request is going to need proper planning and prioritising.
- If it is a fix, we seem unsure of what may need fixing.
If you set Firefox to warn when closing multiple tabs it will tell you how many tabs it is about to close.
There are some things you could try that may help you reduce the number of open tabs.
- Bookmark and then close tabs
Bookmarks are a lot more robust than the open tabs are. You are more likely to lose open tabs than lose bookmarks. - Use multiple profiles. maybe one for each type of task or subject.
- Video is content is possibly more likely to crash than other content. You could keep tabs with high video content in profiles used only for video.
I perfectly understand the goal of this forum but I hopped the dev community would want to make their browser more stable though I know it's not a classic/normal usage scenario. Because this 'do not load tabs until selected' option was clearly designed to allow the usage of more tabs as the enticing 'open everything in a new tab' one.
I tried to create a file with all my tabs as explained by cor-el, it crashed FF. I'm going to try it with a blank profile. EDIT: Worked, thanks cor-el I now have a usable list of all my tabs :) "bookmark all tabs" was kinda of hidden and is amazing, thanks :)
I actually have 3312 tabs opened believing the when the 'closing tabs' prompt (and the session store extraction) and 3289 believing the number of bookmarks created by "bookmark all tabs' Any idea about the difference ?
The instability problem (when it don't directly crash) seems to first touch the UI : screen not refreshing very fast as I type, menus becoming black and so unusable, design around the buttons disappearing, or simply parts of screen wide letters occupying all the display just overlaying the theme image (this is final bug induces every time a crash), etc... But FF can sometime 'recover' and work nicely again.
When recovering the session, it's getting unresponsive for a few minutes, using all the available RAM, and then it start to give back about 600MB of RAM and finally displaying the tabs fully responsive.
PS: I now closed this session but leaving the feed open to allow you to answer and I have still a backup of my sessionstore.js if any test is required or if a fix is found to we don't know what ^^)
Modified by flofl0
I wouldn't want to jump over this hint "I can makes some suggestions about tab use" from john99,but still I can't help thinking that when someone is really having 3000 tabs open,should probably have a look at session manager
Modified by mark2
If the average user only have 3 tabs open it must be companies or individuals who fire up their browser to do one thing and then kill it.
Aka not real "computer users."
Guess it's ok if checking and quitting facebook is all you do.