Re: Slow firefox and high cpu usage
On Wed 10 Oct 2018 at 18:45:16 (-0400), Dan Ritter wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 06:15:06PM -0400, bw wrote:
> > On Wed, 10 Oct 2018, Dan Ritter wrote:
> > > That's because Firefox is now multiprocess.
> > >
> > > The main Firefox process handles the user interface, fetching
> > > web pages, decoding them, and some of the rendering work.
> > >
> > > The Web Content process(es) are fired off to run things that the
> > > web pages demand be run: JavaScript, CSS animations, weird media
> > > things. Mostly JavaScript.
I'm running FF 60.2.2esr and displaying some ancient html (2001) with
static pages containing text and photos. Top shows "firefox-esr"
(7932) most of the time, "Web content" (7988) infrequently, and
"file:// Content" (8026) perhaps a little more often (it's difficult
to judge). These processes pop up almost regardless of when I click to
add another tab to the collection that are open.
ps ax shows the following list of processes:
7932 pts/17 Sl 0:33 firefox-esr file:///home/david/…the index page….html
7988 pts/17 Sl 0:02 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 1 -isForBrowser -intPrefs 235:1| -boolPrefs 36:1|261:1|301:0| -stringPrefs 2
8026 pts/17 Sl 0:07 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 2 -isForBrowser -intPrefs 235:1| -boolPrefs 36:1|261:1|301:0| -stringPrefs 2
8095 pts/17 Sl 0:00 /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr -contentproc -childID 3 -isForBrowser -intPrefs 235:1| -boolPrefs 36:1|261:1|301:0| -stringPrefs 2
I've not observed 8095 in top at all. There's no java/css or anything
like that. I did notice that if I hold down Ctrl-PageUp (ie circulate
through tabs), 7932 and 8026 stay firm at the top of top.
When I close all the tabs and leave open just the Mozilla Firefox
start page that displays the one-inch icons of sites I visit,
PID 8026 disappears, and it's easy to see that 7988 (Web content)
is processing the icons as I move the mouse over them.
> > > Killing them off won't help. You need to solve the underlying
> > > problem.
> > >
> > > I don't know what that is, exactly, but advertising and trackers
> > > now take up 90% of most web processing time and space. Running a
> > > good ad blocker like uBlock Origin will help a lot.
> >
> > How exactly do you think stretch users should run an adblocker when all
> > the xul-ext-* extensions are now broken?
>
> Ah, that's easy. Turns out that stretch is perfectly capable of
> running software that the Debian Project does not package, and I
> would argue that trying to keep a firefox-esr running is not the
> right thing to do. Firefox just isn't ready for the Debian
> definition of stable.
>
> The Debian volunteers working on Firefox would be better serving
> the community if they were only spending a few minutes packaging
> up each major-number release from Mozilla, and putting the rest
> of the time towards looking for security problems in it.
>
> There may well be a use for a "stable" web browser, but Firefox
> can't be that one.
I would understand your writing the last sentence with the word
"secure" (though I would wish to know which insecurities you're
troubled by), but not as written here with "stable". I'm finding
stretch's FF Quantum very stable so far. Is this because I don't
use a DE, perhaps?
Cheers,
David.
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