Hello,
I have been a diehard Firefox user since it was still in Beta. I have been using computers personally since 1994 and professionally since 2004, doing Windows and… (read more)
Hello,
I have been a diehard Firefox user since it was still in Beta. I have been using computers personally since 1994 and professionally since 2004, doing Windows and Linux systems administration. I can and will do whatever (within limits) you need me to do to troubleshoot and resolve this issue, which is otherwise going to cause me to abandon this otherwise excellent browser, perhaps forever. The browser.cache.disk.capacity seems to work, but browser.cache.memory.capacity does not.
Why does firefox not respect the assigned values for browser memory cache (browser.cache.memory.capacity)?
Is there anything I can do to limit the memory and processor usage of Firefox and its child processes?
Is extension CPU/memory usage constrained by the application values?
Is there a way to determine and/or limit the resource usage of extensions?
I have included a number of screenshots documenting its behavior and generated an about:memory report during "normal use". After configuring a number of system variables, I then attempted to determine its resource usage under heavy load.
Open the browser with a couple 2, 3 tabs: ~1GB memory usage
Use the browser as "normal" (dozens tabs): ~2GB memory usage
Open 100+ tabs from history: The CPU and memory resource usage increases until it consumes all available system resources despite configured values. After killing and restarting the process, the tabs have invisible titles in the extension and browser, and must be closed using Ctrl+W until only a few remain after which the browser can be used normally and again consumes ~1GB.
While I understand "just don't open so many tabs", under some circumstances such as poorly written websites, bugs, etc, even single sites may attempt to claim excessive resources. I sometimes run VMs and such on this machine and in order to retain a responsive system, cannot have applications consuming all of the available resources. I have found one proposed solution that uses an external application, is this the only way?
I am open to allowing Firefox to utilize more of the SSD storage (the 1GB limit was imposed for testing) and would be fine with increased slowness due to disk cache or refetching internetworked resources. However, none of the settings I have changed or attempts I have made appear to be able to limit the memory usage in any way. Additional included screenshots are linked above instead of as attachments due to number. I can share or generate additional reports to assist in troubleshooting.
Thank you!
JackD
