Heavy Load → Unresponsive Script Warning

[dhouwn]

Didn't close Firefox for some time, had ~150 tabs open and was doing some pretty heavy tasks in the background, then suddenly:

A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete.

Script: file:///X:/Mozilla%20Firefox/components/nsBlocklistService.js:641

Probably nothing out of the ordinary in this case, just reported for the sake of completeness.

[Giorgio Maone]

This is the anti-phishing/anti-malware feature built-in in Firefox, and yes, it's probably normal since it was contending CPU in the background with your foreground heavy load.

[dhouwn]

Oops!
It was early in the morning and I didn't look at the path and just saw "nsBlabla", so I concluded that "ns" stands for Noscript and that this script was part of Noscript.
Please move this post.

BTW: I remember seeing this message or messages similar to this one or two before times always thinking Noscript was causing this.


/edit:

But now:

Script: chrome://noscript/content/Sites.js:24

[ste123]

But now:

Script: chrome://noscript/content/Sites.js:24

I get this too, on both my desktop and laptop. I also have a lot of tabs open - over 200 on each.

When it occurs, Firefox is rendered unusable (not responding) and a lot of hard disk activity takes place - according to my PC case's hard disk LED and HDDLed (third party Windows app). I tried using another application (AnVir Task Manager Free) to determine which process is causing the hard disk activity, however it did not tell me - nothing stood out. What is also surprising, is I've moved my profile from the default location to a ramdisk, which one would assume would remove any need to access the hard disk, yet the disk access still occurs, not knowing the cause.

I also get the following warnings:

Script: chrome://noscript/content/Sites.js:24 -- most of the time
Script: chrome://noscript/content/Sites.js:197
Script: chrome://noscript/content/Sites.js:57

The problem doesn't occur all the time either. And sometimes, after pressing the Continue button, it may do the same thing again, timing out to another warning message.

I hope we're not the only two peas in this pod, to bring more attention to the issue and hopefully wherever the problem lies - Firefox, NoScript or elsewhere - can be resolved.

Thanks for listening.

[Giorgio Maone]

Does it happen "out of the blue"? Or after some specific action (e.g. changing script permissions)?

[ste123]

Does it happen "out of the blue"? Or after some specific action (e.g. changing script permissions)?

Sorry - I should've been more specific. It happens after selecting either "Temporarily allow [domain]" or "Allow [domain]" via the NS's status bar menu. I don't know if it happens the other way (i.e. "Forbid [domain]"), as I rarely remove whitelistings I've previously made on domains - but I would assume it also occurs.

[Giorgio Maone]

Does it happen "out of the blue"? Or after some specific action (e.g. changing script permissions)?

Sorry - I should've been more specific. It happens after selecting either "Temporarily allow [domain]" or "Allow [domain]" via the NS's status bar menu. I don't know if it happens the other way (i.e. "Forbid [domain]"), as I rarely remove whitelistings I've previously made on domains - but I would assume it also occurs.

Then is probably related to the checks NoScripts must perform on every each tab of yours to tell if it needs to be reloaded.
You can likely mitigate by limiting reload to current tab only, while I can see what can be done to optimize the "hundred tabs" case, e.g. by splitting the checks in batch and pushing them separately in the event queue.

[Giorgio Maone]

Please check latest development build

[ste123]

Hi Giorgio,

Just want to say it works a treat. I wanted to say this right after you released the development build, but I was "greeted" by an unexpected image upon pressing Submit...

Many thanks!