firefox 3 beta 1 memory/cpu issue
Starting yesterday, we began receiving reports of a new memory/cpu usage issue that happens shortly after a normal startup and can spike the CPU and chew up hundreds of MB of RAM. This is apparently happening to people with new profiles or in profiles that have a very outdated list of bad sites for the Phishing Protection feature and the Malware Protection feature.
What's going on is that soon after Firefox is started, Firefox tries to fetch updates to the site forgery and malware lists -- the lists of bad sites that allows Firefox to warn users about suspected Phishing and Attack sites. If the profile has very outdated or no local lists, as is the case for a new Firefox profile, Firefox is trying to bring down these rather large lists in one big chunk rather than slowly in small chunks. This causes Firefox to consume large amounts of CPU and memory and can slow the users machine to a crawl.
I suspect this is the problem that's being reported here, here, and here.
This problem is due to the change in the "SafeBrowsing Protocol" which only affects Firefox 3 Beta 1 and nightly build users. If you're on Firefox 2, this isn't going to affect you.
The work-around for this problem is for us to throttle it on the server side. We're working on that now and I'll post an update as soon as I've got confirmation that it's taken care of.
update: And it should be fixed now -- 1:06 PM PDT (UTC -8)
reactions, thoughts, comments, etc.
That happened to me as well. I created a new profile, started up FF3B1, and it nearly crashed my computer. I attributed it to the fact that the software is still in Beta, so I wasn't too concerned. Nice to know that it's not a bug, per se.
Posted by: James Asher | November 21, 2007 2:40 PM
An off topic question.
In screenshots I've seen of people (Ars Technica for example.) testing beta1. I see that a "places" link is in the bookmark toolbar.
In my own install I have neither that or any of my bookmarks in the toolbar. The bookmarks toolbar folder does exist in my bookmarks but is not showing on the toolbar anyone else getting these issues?
Posted by: Paul | November 21, 2007 3:22 PM
Good to hear - this was affecting me on Windows and resulted me in downgrading to 2.0.0.9. Not been a problem on my Mac, however, and I'm loving the new Proto theme.
Posted by: Neil T. | November 21, 2007 3:49 PM
Paul, that sounds like what happened to me when I went from trunk build ~20051120 to beta 1. (I.e. going "back in time".) I then installed the latest trunk again and they were back.
Posted by: David Naylor | November 21, 2007 4:21 PM
I'll chip in and say that I also really like the Proto theme.
Also, web pages look awsome in 3! Partly because of smooth fonts, partly because of native widgets I guess.
Posted by: David Naylor | November 21, 2007 4:31 PM
Asa,
For lack of a better place to post this until I have a better idea of what is going on - I have been using 3.0 beta at work since yesterday. About four times, Firefox has just simply died. There has not been an error message or any warning. The dying has not been while I do anything. It has happened when I work on Outlook or MS Word or something else and Firefox is open in the background.
When I have started it again, it gives me the option of starting a new session as it should. It works.
It looks great and some of the features will be fabulous, I will try to figure out what is happening and give you better details.
Posted by: timfry | November 21, 2007 4:50 PM
Paul: You're probably seeing https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=404453 .
If you use a newer trunk build then go back to the beta on the same profile, your bookmark toolbar will disappear, but it will still work on trunk. It's due to changes in the sqlite schema apparently.
Posted by: Ted Mielczarek | November 21, 2007 8:43 PM
Paul: You're probably seeing https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=404453 .
If you use a newer trunk build then go back to the beta on the same profile, your bookmark toolbar will disappear, but it will still work on trunk. It's due to changes in the sqlite schema apparently.
Posted by: Ted Mielczarek | November 21, 2007 8:45 PM
Hehe, I was wondering what that was.
Funny how these ugly bugs seem to rear their head on day 1 of Beta 1 just as everyone is ready to see if the new browser works yet or not?
Posted by: Damian Shaw | November 21, 2007 9:18 PM
Hmm, interesting. Too bad I won't be in the office again until December to see if that has fixed my problems.
Posted by: Daniel | November 21, 2007 10:56 PM
Thanks for the places advice folks worked a treat! :)
Posted by: Paul | November 22, 2007 1:00 AM
On a related topic, wouldn't it make more sense to store the site forgery and malware lists in some profile-independent location, so that each profile wouldn't have to download the same data over and over? This would be a little tricky because whether to use the list or not depends on a pref on each profile, but there should be some way to detect if at least one profile is set to use the lists.
Posted by: James Napolitano | November 22, 2007 5:50 AM
lol....
Posted by: Britt | November 22, 2007 8:43 AM
Firefox 3 will be great!
Posted by: Matias Jose | November 22, 2007 9:11 AM
I'm looking forward to Firefox 3.
Posted by: Paul | November 23, 2007 4:51 PM
I've tried the latest nightly build and just have to say I'm quite positively surprised by it's speed and many improvements here and there (btw. I love dragging images with mouse :)). So, thank you folks at Mozilla very much, I'm looking forward too.
Posted by: Pietro | November 25, 2007 5:48 AM