[RESOLVED] NoScript 2.0 and 2.0.1rc1 performance problems

[miroslav.policki]

I use Firefox 3.6.8 and I have around 360 tabs open. Before NoScript 2.0, things were good, but NoScript 2.0 and 2.0.1rc1 cause my browser to hang/become unresponsive/freeze temporarily. I have disabled every extension and plugin except NoScript and this is still the case. After the tabs load and the browser goes into a steady state, this is what the cpu usage looks like:

The peaks are Firefox using 100% of one CPU core, and it is during that time that it hangs. Needless to say, it is unusable in this condition which forces me not to use NoScript 2.

EDIT: Image extended to show private bytes history as well.

[therube]

I haven't particularly looked, but also haven't particularly noticed anything like this.

My browser session, in total, uses about 1 GB of Mem, over 30 some windows & who knows how many tabs.

I''ll try to take a look tonight to see if I notice anything like that.

(In the <long ago> past, I had noticed similar issues, but they were resolved at that time.)

[Giorgio Maone]

The peaks are Firefox using 100% of one CPU core

1. What' the time resolution of that graph (i.e. how often does the peak happen and how long does it last)?
2. Does downgrading to 1.10 actually help?
3. Does disabling the new WAN IP protection in 2.0 help?
4. Have you got any security software (especially personal firewall or "web shield") which installs a browser plugin? If so, could you try disabling it and/or check for errors in its logs?

[therube]

Process Explorer may be a better utility to use, as you can isolate seamonkey.exe (firefox.exe) alone in a graph.

30 windows (pretty good idea on number can be obtained from about:sessionrestore), 1.1 GB of Mem usage.

Graph is pretty much flat-lined, small peaks as I type this out.

Still on 2.0. No A/V or anything like that, except for Windows Defender is running.



New SeaMonkey & new 2.0.1rc1 momentarily.

[therube]

After sitting for a while, then coming back.
(View Image to see entire pic.)
Quad-core here, so a 25% reading would be 100% of 1-core.
Blip interval looks to be about 50 seconds.

[miroslav.policki]

1. What' the time resolution of that graph (i.e. how often does the peak happen and how long does it last)?
2. Does downgrading to 1.10 actually help?
3. Does disabling the new WAN IP protection in 2.0 help?
4. Have you got any security software (especially personal firewall or "web shield") which installs a browser plugin? If so, could you try disabling it and/or check for errors in its logs?

1. The resolution is 6 seconds (perhaps +-5%) per square. The screenshot is from Process Explorer.
2. Yes, 1.10 does not have this problem. The graph:

As you can see there are spikes, but those that reach 100% (i.e. 50% in the graph) are much more rare and though they do cause hangs, they only last a moment so it's much more tolerable.
3. Disabling WAN IP protection (which I assume is done by unchecking WAN IP (address) element LOCAL) doesn't have much of a noticeable effect. However with that and ABE disabled, things do appear a little better (v. 2.0.1rc1):

However, even with this configuration, the problem is not really solved. I have also noticed that there is a periodicity in the private bytes history graph and that it matches the CPU spikes. EDIT: I've edited my first post, the screenshot there now also shows private bytes. You can see periodicity (and that it matches every other CPU spike) there as well.
4. I use Comodo Firewall and Avast antivirus but neither of them have installed plugins. Besides, as I first reported, all plugins and extensions except NoScript were disabled during the observed behavior.

[al_9x]

I had a similar problem, possibly related to NS, around build .98/.99 time frame and was getting ready to use the profiler in venkman, suggested by Giorgio. He posted a patch you need to apply to one venkman file for the opening of the profiling results to work. My problem went away with a new build so I never got around to the profiling and can't guarantee that venkman will produce anything useful, but it's worth a try.

[Giorgio Maone]

4. I use Comodo Firewall and Avast antivirus but neither of them have installed plugins. Besides, as I first reported, all plugins and extensions except NoScript were disabled during the observed behavior.

I've got Comodo and used to have Avast (I'm using Comodo's antivirus as well now to reduce the clutter) and as far as I can recall Avast has some sort of transparent proxy used to provide "web security".
Could you try temporarily disabling it and see if it makes any difference?

[Alan Baxter]

as far as I can recall Avast has some sort of transparent proxy used to provide "web security".
Could you try temporarily disabling it and see if it makes any difference?

In particular, Avast calls it the Web Shield. Unfortunately, temporarily disabling the Web Shield in Avast's REAL-TIME SHIELDS > Web Shield pane does not disable its transparent proxy. Temporarily disabling it merely tells the proxy not to do any malware checks while its handling each packet.

If temporarily disabling the Web Shield doesn't change anything, then for a definitive test you''ll need to temporarily change the Avast configuration. You will need to restart the computer before the configuration change takes effect. On Windows XP that's done through Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs.
- Select avast! Free Antivirus and press Change/Remove.
- In the resulting avast! Free Antivirus Setup dialog, click Change and then the Next button. Wait for it to download the change package.
- Uncheck Web Shield in the resulting Configuration window and press Next. Avast will update its configuration.
- Close Firefox and any other programs you usually close before restarting the computer.
- In avast! Free Antivirus Setup, select Restart and press Finish.

[therube]

Yesterday, I had two (Windows) Users open, running SeaMonkey in each, & using ~1 GB of Mem in each. In the second one, I was getting prolonged high CPU usage & locking of SeaMonkey, though I'll attribute that to Flash (& somewhat unstable nightlies of late). At one point, I did actually crash (extremely rare).

Flash can always be a culprit in these kinds of things, but was/is not in use (or only minimally) under my first User account.

Also, just because do not (normally) see long duration, high CPU usage, does not mean that I do not see (or perceive) "performance" issues. Though very difficult to quantify or to place blame at anything particular.

[miroslav.policki]

First of all, sorry if I appear to be MIA, I'm very busy lately.

So. I updated NoScript to 2.0.2rc1. Then I tried first disabling, then uninstalling Avast's Web shield. Neither helped.

Next, I installled Venkman 0.9.87.4 with the patch mentioned by al_9x. After I started Firefox and everything loaded, I tried running Venkman. Processor usage proceeded to max out and Firefox started to regularly give me the unresponsive script dialog, referring to Venkman. I tried waiting for some time to see if it would eventually load, but nothing changed and I gave up. Same thing happened with the non-patched version.

Then I found Firebug and Chromebug, installed version 1.6(X).0a11, set the context to RequestWatchdog.js, started profiling, allowed and disallowed a page in NoScript, and stopped profiling. The result I got was "No activity to profile". Does anyone know if it's possible to use Chromebug to profile NoScript? I'm all out of ideas.

[luntrus]

Hi miroslav policki,

It could be an incompatibility issue with one of the add-ons/extensions you have installed, try to install Nightly Tester Tools:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6543/
and set in Extra - Add-ons (update) to Override all compatibility, then look in the NTT's Analyse Leak log and report here,

The avast shields have never presented any problems inside the Mozilla browser (neither Fx or Flock) for me,
you could also report in the avast web forums, register there and address your posting to me under my other nick there as: "polonus",

luntrus

[miroslav.policki]

You mean there could be incompatibility problems even if all other extensions and plugins are disabled?

[al_9x]

Does venkman start in a new profile? Can you repro your problem in a new profile with NS? If yes, can you profile? Also what's the min number of tabs required? Does it matter what urls are loaded? if scripting is allowed? Create a page with a script that will open the minimum number of tabs with the simplest pages possible to generate the problem and post it. This will make it easy for others to try to repro.

If not (new profile), you could try moving the important pieces of the old into the new (ns settings, browser settings, places, other .sqlite).

[GµårÐïåñ]

For me I get random freezing of the browser which also makes the OS completely unstable and I have to force power down the machine and start over. Now the funny thing is that this ONLY happens after I open the browser with NoScript installed, using the empty profile doesn't create this freeze. Now, also should be noted that it happens at completely random intervals, sometimes its minutes after using it, sometimes its hours and sometimes its the instant the browser starts up. So not exactly sure what part of it and what action or what component is causing it and frankly till now, I was blaming Firefox's latest update for it, but seeing this thread I have been paying closer attention to the freeze ups and I found that it does only happen when Fx has NS on it but still not sure WHY. This is ALWAYS preceded immediately by a huge spike in CPU to 100% and several seconds of excessive load and then FREEZE.