Hello, Firefox sometimes uses more memory than it should. Try one of these easy fixes

• http://mzl.la/LnX4ca

Report us back if this work

I've tried all of them and I've actually mentioned quite a few of them in my original post (even if I did forgot to mention stuff like disabling HW acceleration in FF and/or Flash)...did you read it?

Well, all of them except adding more RAM. But since I already have 8GB of RAM, which should be plenty for a single web browser, even with 50 tabs open, and FF crashes due to memory issues at around 2.4GB memory allocated anyway, I fail to see how adding more RAM would be supposed to help. Also, since the browser is allocating more and more RAM over time no matter what, adding more RAM wouldn't really be a solution even if it didn't crash first - I could have 64GB of RAM and yet FF would eventually run out of it, since there's nothing I can do to make it release at least some RAM it has already allocated.

Also, "use less tabs" or "restart Firefox more often" do not really solve anything and shouldn't even be on the list in the first place, even if I was willing to do that. The real solution would be fixing whatever underlying issues there are (which might or might not lie in FF, granted), not going out of your way to avoid it.

I've escalated this thread so that way someone from the full-time professional SUMO HelpDesk team can get back to you and provide you more information than I know. Please wait 24-72 hours for a response

In the meantime, Can you give me your crash reports?

1. Enter about:crashes in the Firefox address bar and press Enter. A Submitted Crash Reports list will appear, similar to the one shown below.
2. Copy the 5 most recent Report IDs that start with bp- and paste them into your response here.

OK, thanks.

The five latest crash reports:

bp-c5d4e7e4-2420-472d-a386-9507d2140711 bp-d7dfce1d-5094-4443-833e-8e5ad2140708 bp-31693cb6-3a71-406c-98e9-626302140708 bp-d8901d11-3bc9-404e-a7f9-187dd2140707 bp-2bc70e43-73c2-4d70-83f2-4400d2140705

I honestly don't remember the actual circumstances that lead to those crashes and I've tried a ton of stuff lately trying to get to the bottom of this issue, though, so I'm not sure how relevant those latest crashes might actually be. Obviously, looking through them now, most of them seem to be related to some kind of texture creation issue, but I've definitely tried running FF with both HW acceleration on and off and it didn't seem to have any effect on the memory allocation issue.

HI gfxContext::PushClipsToDT(mozilla::gfx::DrawTarget*) , and Yar are the two signatures.

1. I recommend updating to Firefox 31, this is coming out tomorrow.
2. I recommend updating your drivers. Upgrade your graphics drivers to use hardware acceleration and WebGL

However, Firefox is constantly improving so please check back in a few months to see if it could be the browser for you.

I'll most certainly update my FF to 31, as I always keep my installs as up-to-date as possible (sometimes regretting it, but that's another case). However, I'm not holding my breath, given that I've already tried the latest nightlies (I've mentioned it in my original post) and it didn't really change anything.

As for updating drivers, I'm using the latest nVidia WHQL (337.88) on my main Win7 x64 install already. I might try the latest beta, but given that (again, as I've already mentioned) the problem manifests itself both on my secondary Win8.1 x64 install (with some previous nVidia WHQL drivers, I believe) and in Linux (using latest nVidia binary blob beta), I'm kinda doubtful that drivers are the issue.

Create new profile and check whether current profile eating your memory or not

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles

Ya, rereading the bug with the PushtoClips signature it seems what is being affected is D2D failing on us. They are waiting for "Use Direct2D 1.1 on mozilla-central" from bug805406#c107 and after two patches there was an increase in linux being affected.

In the past it was recommended to temporarily disable D2D, but later is was a general out of memory error with specific use cases with large graphics.

Another user found updating to 31 to alleviate a majority of the crashes on a Windows 7 machine and the system called it a plugin container crash.

Hypothesis: From all that, its a combination of high graphics, freeing memory when it is in the 2GB usage of memory threshold and perhaps plugins using memory that causes this crash?

It has not been confirmed if 31 is affected, but that release version is out today :-)

In the meantime Ramback is a nice add on for general memory management. Again this is a work around and the issue is still being worked on.

lamjayakumars: Really?

guigs2: I've tried Ramback, but it didn't seem to have any real effects on the memory allocated by FF as reported in Task manager. i can try it a bit more, of course. And I'll see what FF31 changes, if anything (but see my mentions of FF33 nightly not really solving much). But thanks anyway for at least trying.

Truth be told, I'm thinking about marking this as Solved, even if it's not, since I'm not really sure what more can be done here...

So, to sum my experience after upgrading to FF31 - despite not having much luck when trying FF33 nightly, it seems that FF31 final DOES indeed solve the issue, more or less. It's not perfect by any means, it still keeps on swallowing more memory over time, but it's MUCH better than it was with FF30.

I can keep FF running for a whole day with it "only" taking up something like 200MB of memory more, while with FF30, it was eating memory so fast it would crash from out of memory issues just a couple of hours after starting it.

RAMBack also seems to have some effect now - it only manages to free something like 1/3 of the memory I'd expect it to be able to free, but it's still something.

In other words, as of FF31 final, the memory allocated by the browser grows once again at pretty much the same rate as when using Pale Moon. So there most likely still is some underlying issue, but it's much better than it was with FF30.

I'm gonna go and mark guigs2's reply as the one that solved the problem, as she ^{guigs2 is a woman! :)}was the most helpful and recommended upgrading to FF31 in the first place. Technically, I still don't consider the issue solved, but I can certainly manage to work with the minor issues now. Hopefully the problem doesn't return with some future update...

Thanks to all that were trying to help.

I think a lot of Firefox users are going to be looking at this thread because they see memory issues and at the same time Firefox being slow, or crashing or have the graphics related problems.

Anyone else with similar problems

Most importantly you must try with the current release Fx31 not with earlier versions that have known issues.

Obviously read this thread and if you have known solutions to the specific problems relating to these crash signatures please join in the thread. Also follow the thread as it develops you may wish to use the subscribe button or email /questions/1011071#email-subscribe buttons.

If you have your own problem. Then in addition to reading the thread

1. Vote on this thread so that it is noticed. Use the button [I have this problem too]
2. Use feedback input.mozilla.org/feedback
   • I suggest make only a short comment about single subjects
     Otherwise it is likely to be lost in noise as a general complaint.
   • Statistical information from input feedback is made available to developers.
   • Anyone can see & filter the comments in an interactive webpage dashboard input.mozilla.org
3. Turn on telemetry See Share data with Mozilla to help improve Firefox
   • Most of the data is unlikely to mean anything to average users (or me ) but:
     To view your own data use about:telemetry (key that into the addesssbar)
     Note results of aggregated data is available publicly here telemetry.mozilla.org in another interactive dashboard
4. Please do not post in this thread to ask for a solution
   1. Instead please use special link
   2. Please try to follow the prompts and include troubleshooting info when you do that. (There is a green button to automate the process. Use that, or if you encounter problems doing so mention that in the new thread.)
   • The special link is fast as it cuts out some steps and helpers will recognise that you have seen this thread already.
     It ensures you get advice best suited to your individual problem

Case_f

That's a great post you made. Thanks for all the detail.

Sorry you are having problems but it is good to have HelpDesk involved and a user that is trying to stick to using Firefox and willing and able to do some troubleshooting on a difficult problem and may not yet be permanently migrating to Palemoon, although that is what you used to post this question.

It is obviously not solved if firefox crashes most days still. Is that the case ? You said

 Technically, I still don't consider the issue solved, 

If the problems still persist and are seen in Fx34 HelpDesk may be able to suggest either which bugs we are waiting for or assist in filing and following up on a new bug.

I must admit I have been seeing memory issues intermittently myself but not in a way that I can reliably reproduce them whereas in ESR or Palemoon I do not see problems but in Fx31 & Fx32 I still do. Firefox recently seems to have had a raft of unresolved issues. Hopefully now Australis is out developers will be back to fixing problems.

It may be worth you testing up as far as the nightly Fx34 pre release versions see if the issue is resolved by then and what crash signatures you get. It would probably be prudent to try Fx34 as an additional install and with both a clone of your current profile and clean test profile. I guess you will already know how to do that but others are bound to read this thread so some may find these articles useful

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Testing_pre-release_versions#Installing_multiple_versions
• Standard basic advice Profile Manager - Create, remove or switch Firefox profiles_creating-a-profile
  • http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_multiple_profiles_-_Firefox
  • https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Profile_Manager
    Great for generating and using clean temporary test profiles for more advanced testing.
  • If you are new to using multiple Firefox profiles then because we do not document this in the Sumo KB you may be interested in reading my tips in two adjacent posts /questions/990973#answer-548376 & /questions/990973#answer-548377

Thanks again, I will leave you in the capable hands of HelpDesk, and watch this thread with interest.

Mainly for my own interest.

I am doing some cross linking here.

Somebugs listed as Linux or linux only but clearly appear also related to Windows issues (& similar also on Android). Some mention Fx33 fixes.

Some Loosely Related Question & Contributor Threads

• Firefox 30.0 also crashing /questions/1005505 (Similar signature, but NOT high memory use, resolved in Fx31)
• Troubleshooting Memory & Jank: Use of About:Memory, Telemetry, FHR & Profiler /forums/support-forum-contributors/710511
  ( My recent - 25th July, tentative question and suggestion)
• Firefox is unbearably slow after updating to version 27 /questions/985969 ( 78 replies, 603 have this problem, 31662 views )
• Slowdown of Fx26-30, graphics issue with no workaround (bug 973149 )
  /forums/support-forum-contributors/710388

Crash info for forum cross referencing purposes (<Rant> - This even allows the thread to be found from the hard coded searches from crash-stats.mozilla.com pages if anyone ever tries them - unfortunately the sumo search algorithm they have to use is not really fit for that purpose, or much good at searching our forum we on sumo need a proper & useful advanced search </rant> )

• Your Reports for Crash IDs
  1. bp-c5d4e7e4-2420-472d-a386-9507d2140711
     bp-d8901d11-3bc9-404e-a7f9-187dd2140707
     bp-2bc70e43-73c2-4d70-83f2-4400d2140705
  2. bp-d7dfce1d-5094-4443-833e-8e5ad2140708
  3. bp-31693cb6-3a71-406c-98e9-626302140708
• Crash Signatures
  1. gfxContext::PushClipsToDT(mozilla::gfx::DrawTarget*)
  2. JSC::Yarr::Vector<JSC::Yarr::YarrGenerator<int>::YarrOp, int>::append<JSC::Yarr::YarrGenerator<int>::YarrOpCode>(JSC::Yarr::YarrGenerator<int>::YarrOpCode const&)
  3. JSC::Yarr::YarrGenerator<int>::opCompileAlternative(JSC::Yarr::PatternAlternative*)
• Related bugs (partial listing only, with my own comments)
  1. Bug 1027103 - Google Maps Street View crashes in gfxContext::PushClipsToDT(mozilla::gfx::DrawTarget*) (Linux only & fixed ?? in Fx33)
     Bug 1027103 - Google Maps Street View crashes in gfxContext::PushClipsToDT(mozilla::gfx::DrawTarget*) https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1011348 (Has testcase wonder if fixed in Fx33 - I may try to reproduce myself)
     Bug 1011864 - Mozilla Firefox 29.0 crash (pointing to Null ) with window.open and very large sizes (PushClipsToDT signature) (Windows XP ) ( -> bug 1029125 & bug1029124 )
     Bug 805406 - crash in gfxContext::PushClipsToDT with Direct2D 1.1 (d3d11.dll 6.2 or 6.3)
  2. & 3. Is it a top crash signature related to OOM issues that will be fixed - or if there are OOM or JS continuing issues signature will morph again ? in Fx32 see
     Bug 814954 - crash in JSC::Yarr::YarrGenerator<int>::opCompileParenthesesSubpattern -> Bug 976446 - Replace YARR with irregexp
• Bugzilla used for bug tracking and reporting
• Please only vote or follow . Do not add comments unless it is brand new information, or it is something asked for in the bug.
  • https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=voting.html
  • https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html
  • Follow by using CC
    You are able to follow the bugs by using the [Save] option whilst the []CC option is checked.
  • Note you need an email address to register with bugzilla and that will be made public

john99: When I say that technically I don't consider the issue solved, I mean the issue of FF eating more and more RAM over time. I don't consider the crashes the main issue here, as I believe they are simply a side effect of FF allocating so much RAM over time that it crashes. I haven't seen a single crash since uprading to FF31 final, but I believe that's mainly because I didn't leave FF running long enough - with FF30, the allocated RAM growing was so out of hand that it crashed in a couple of hours, as I've said, whereas with FF31 and its much slower rate of RAM allocation growing, I believe it might take several days and while I do keep my PC running over long periods of time, I didn't leave FF running that long yet (since I had to restart it or even reboot my PC for other reasons). The longest I've kept FF31 running so far was about two days (give or take), and by then, it was up to around 1.9GB of allocated RAM (from about 1.3-1.4GB it allocates on fresh start) with RAMBack knocking it down to aroun 1.8GB when used. So it might take something like 4-5 days straight now to reach the point of it crashing and I usually reboot my PC before that (since I'm quite often switching between non-virtualized Linux and WIndows for work-related reasons). It's likely I'll get to uptime like that in the future, but it's hard to say when will that happen. If it does happen and FF does allocate so much RAM it crashes, I can report it here no problem, if it's OK to "ressurect" older threads.

As for trying out FF34 nightly, I can certainly do that and see how it is. I'm kinda interested in it myself, given that FF33 nightly didn't seem to have any effect on my problems before, yet FF31 stable did make a significant difference. I have no problems with installing multiple versions of a browser and/or using multiple profiles. So will do (and report on that) as time allows.

Forum software closes threads after 3 months inactivity IIRC. But it is easy to cross link threads.

Sounds like there is a problem but not so bad that it is easy to investigate.

I have recently mainly been using Fx31 and now Fx32 on Linux and do sometimes see high memory usage with Firefox almost grinding to halt. It has not been crashing and I have not figured out how to reproduce the issue myself. On Linux I only use 64 bit Firefox. I am not even certain the issue is just with Firefox. Once the Ubuntu OS is paging to swap file I am not sure restarting Firefox is sufficient an OS restart seems necessary.

I have never been in the position of seeing rapid memory increases and crashes. At present it is little more than an annoyance knowing something is wrong. If memory usage increased rapidly it should be an easier issue to investigate ;-)

You did mention in the first post

I don't even have to use FF for this to happen - if I simply leave it running for two hours, when I come back, it's process is already using a few hundred MB of memory more.

That is irrelevant now as the the problem is not present in the current the Release. I image that could have been investigated by

• Running about:memory before and after and diffing the two reports.
  That would show where that memory is used.
• Leaving the profiler running.
  That should give data that would enable an engineer to understand what was happening

Just leaving this as a place holder just in case the thread does grow or others start their own threads that need cross linking.

My 2 cents (which could be a lot less with inflation and all :P). I have all four releases of Firefox loaded and running non-stop/simultaneously for about 10-12 hours every day. I mainly use the Nightly channel (10-15 tabs) but I also start tabs in the other releases (to answer questions or test them). I'm running Win7/64 with 4GB RAM. I very rarely have severe memory issues.

It probably is a long shot (and I know that the Owner has referred to two computers and various OSs) but here are some thoughts: 1. Broken garbage collection (which would be a very big coincidence for two computers and Win7/8.1 and Linux) 2. Are the Tabs opened specific? We have met cases that some plugins from specific sites (especially social media sites) were leaking memory.

john99:

You did mention in the first post

I don't even have to use FF for this to happen - if I simply leave it running for two hours, when I come back, it's process is already using a few hundred MB of memory more.

That is irrelevant now as the the problem is not present in the current the Release.

But it is present. As I've said, FF still DOES leak memory over time. And it still happens even with FF just sitting there without me actually using it, just at much slower rate than what I was experiencing before.

As for diffing the memory reports, I've tried that on FF30 before and it didn't really tell me much - as the amount of used memory the about:memory reported was smaller than what task manager said FF was using. So the memory reported in about:memory didn't really grow much over time, but the amount of memory, allocated by FF, as reported by task manager, still did. I've mentioned that in my previous comments too. I've managed to single out some less-than-ideal-behaving pages (for example social media sites like FB and G+, like CAKCy suggests) by diffing the memory reports, but it didn't really solve much overall as far as the growing allocated memory went.

Can try that again with FF31, of course.

All rather speculative and hypothetical at present, but if a particular site is a problem: either because it is leaking memory or it is continuing activity unexpectedly then it is good to identify the site in question.

It may be possible to mitigate problems. The site itself may be able to do something. Script blockers may be able to prevent the problem, and of course the site could be avoided.

The about:memory results should be more specific and more detailed than the task manger and also have buttons to affect memory. It would be interesting to note whether or not "[Minimise Memory Usage]" helps.

If Firefox has memory issues in using G+ or FB then in my opinion that is serious because of the obvious popularity of such sites. It certainly would need investigating and documenting and presumably it would be appropriate to file bugs.

just wanted to say i also have this issue with firefox on 31

i only will leave 3 tabs open yet it will slowly grow in size (if it matters the tabs are in fact on gamefaqs.com) i have tried disabling all add-ons and running FF in nothing but safe mode with all add-ons disabled yet it will still happen and while i haven't let it crash yet it has grown enough in size to slow considerably at that point i have to close and reopen firefox and then the process of it slowly growing starts all over again (i can only imagine if i used more tabs)

i've tried everything on the "firefox is using to much ram" page (aside from adding more memory as that isn't possible with this computer) and have also tried ramback and while ramback helps a little it never frees up all the ram firefox has increased by

i hope this issue can be ironed out as i have been using firefox for quiet some time now and don't want to have to change

Hi HitokiriBattousai, Sorry you are having problems. That sounds like something we should be able to help with, if you would like to assist us in reporting this.

If you have not done so already^[1] start your own question^[2] it is the sort of problem where we should be able to say either it is a problem with that website or it is a Firefox problem

Either way Firefox or the website may fix the problem IF it is properly identified and reported.

1. The forum broke last week. Normally we can see and find questions asked from
   The links next to the posters avatar (e.g. /user/HitokiriBattousai ) -> Then the Profile link to questions (i.e.) that is misbehaving at present
2. Please read and follow the instructions in my first post upthread. Use special link and post back here once you have done so.

This my be late in the game; however this situation is still present in FF 33.1 latest release. I do however have a couple of things to add to this.

I have observed that this is most likely to occur for me when I am visiting a Facebook page with a high volume of video's on it. It is especially present when I follow one or more of these video's to another page where a HD video is playing. Many times I have solved the immediate issue by selecting a Low D version of the video, however, more likely I will have to restart FF to keep the system from grinding to a halt. Additionally I have noted that FF will remain in memory for several minutes after I have closed FF and many times I have to Kill FF process to force it to release the Memory.

Thus far I have not found the solution in the forums regarding FF remaining in memory for an extended time after closing. If any of you have a link it would be most appreciated.