InformAction Forums

Windows XP SP3, Firefox 35.0.1, NS2.6.9.13

This has been going on for many months, and I have not pinned it down to a specific suspect, so I would like to bring it up here, but it's probably an issue with Firefox:

Over time, the Windows Task Manager (WTM) will show Mem Usage for Firefox.exe to be steadily increasing. I typically leave a few sites open for days at a time that are given permanent full permission to allow scripts.

This is my impression: when Firefox (by whatever manner) has an addon that is ready to be updated, the Mem Usage climb rate has greatly increased. So, I exit Firefox, wait for the memory to be reclaimed and the process to be removed from WTM. I then start Firefox again and receive any additional tabs where the addon will announce that it has been updated.

Since NS gets updated far more often than any other addon, the smoke from the smoking gun seems to linger around NS more than any other addon.

I gave some consideration to installing Firefox Portable and not installing NS (but installing others, like ReminderFox, FireShot, Go-Mobile, etc.) - restricting myself to using said installation only for those particular sites mentioned earlier. But I do not know if the difference between a standard installation and a portable installation would skew the observations.

Any thoughts or guidance?

bsmither wrote:I gave some consideration to installing Firefox Portable and not installing NS (but installing others, like ReminderFox, FireShot, Go-Mobile, etc.) - restricting myself to using said installation only for those particular sites mentioned earlier. But I do not know if the difference between a standard installation and a portable installation would skew the observations.

Why not install two Firefox Portables, in two different subdirectories of the same directory, put NoScript in one but not the other, make sure they're the same otherwise, and compare those?

> Windows Task Manager (WTM) will show Mem Usage for Firefox.exe to be steadily increasing.

Steadily how?
At some point, so long as FF remains open, memory usage increases regardless of browser activity?
So FF is open, doing nothing but memory usage is going up?
Going up how much?
And if you don't close FF, eventually, over some relatively sort period of time, you'll crash due to OOM issues?

> when Firefox (by whatever manner) has an addon that is ready to be updated, the Mem Usage
> climb rate has greatly increased

I would not think that.
An extension update has downloaded & sits there in an /extensions/staged/ directory until the next browser restart. (At least that's all I've ever known it to do.)

You could purposely download/install an older version (of NoScript) fire up FF & wait for the update to come down (staged) & see if you notice any related memory usage increase before restarting (& installing the update).