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How do I correct the memory leak where gfx-surface-quartz is negative in v28.0 for Mac OS X?

  • 2 replies
  • 11 have this problem
  • 86 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

Karambir
Karambir
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My computer has become increasingly sluggish when Firefox v28.0 is open. I ran about:memory and found gfx-surface-quartz is a negative number! This was also the case in v27.0 as I recently upgraded in hopes that you had fixed this bug. Firefox is not secure if you allow a known memory bug to continue to exist from version to version. Memory issues are one of the most common ways to take over a system so I am surprised you have not fixed this issue; instead telling people to close tabs and uninstall plugins. Not very robust. Does this mean that if someone wants to take over my Mac, all they have to do is write a Firefox plugin that will cause a memory problem?  :( I would gladly upload the output from about:memory as a file, but there doesn't appear to be a way to do this and the output itself is greater than the 10,000 character limit..

Kind regards, Karambir Singh

My computer has become increasingly sluggish when Firefox v28.0 is open. I ran about:memory and found gfx-surface-quartz is a negative number! This was also the case in v27.0 as I recently upgraded in hopes that you had fixed this bug. Firefox is not secure if you allow a known memory bug to continue to exist from version to version. Memory issues are one of the most common ways to take over a system so I am surprised you have not fixed this issue; instead telling people to close tabs and uninstall plugins. Not very robust. Does this mean that if someone wants to take over my Mac, all they have to do is write a Firefox plugin that will cause a memory problem? :( I would gladly upload the output from about:memory as a file, but there doesn't appear to be a way to do this and the output itself is greater than the 10,000 character limit.. Kind regards, Karambir Singh

All Replies (2)

Wesley Branton
Wesley Branton
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If you would like to report this issue to the developers, please file a bug report on Bugzilla so that the Mozilla developers can investigate the issue.

cor-el
cor-el
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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Negative numbers on the about:memory page are usually caused by an overflow that causes the left most bit to get set (i.e. a signed number with the maximum int value that is incremented changes to a negative number).

Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance).

  • Do NOT click the Reset button on the Safe Mode start window.