Re: I think Firefox is crashing my system
On Saturday 16 August 2025 02:54:32 pm rhkramer@gmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, August 15, 2025 07:39:56 PM Van Snyder wrote:
> > On Sat, 2025-08-16 at 00:33 +0100, alain williams wrote:
> > > • When the system crashes return to the console and have a look at
> > > what top is telling you - check especially Memory and Swap use.
> >
> > When the system crashes, it is well and truly crashed. The mouse cursor
> > doesn't move. The keyboard doesn't do anything. Tapping the power
> > button doesn't do anything. The graphs in GKrellM aren't moving,... And
> > I can't log in from another computer using ssh. So it's hard to return
> > to the console and ask what top is telling me.
>
> I'm going to chime in here, even though I am running some older versions of
> Debian and Firefox (newest is 103).
>
> I have found that:
>
> * Firefox uses a lot of memory, especially when I have a lot of tabs open
Not only that, but the amount that it uses keeps on increasing the longer it runs.
> * When free memory gets low (maybe to 0), I experience the same systems
> described by the OP -- everything locks up (and the hard disk light goes on
> solid).
In looking at a process list I can see that the swap process is the most active, so I'd call this "thrashing". Once it gets to that point the only way out of it seems to be to power cycle the machine. Somewhere or other I saw a recommendation to not leave it running continuously, but to shut it down and restart it. My comment to them was to fix the damn memory leaks! I'm not sure what's going on exactly, but I think that it has something to do with javascript.
> I've taken to do the following:
>
> * I keep a konsole window open running top with my firefox window positioned
> on top of it but offset so I can see the free memory number and the resident
> memory column.
I have KDE's "System Monitor" running on another desktop. I can see memory and swap usage at a glance.
> * I pay attention especially to the free memory number, and when it gets
> low ...
I try to pay attention, but once in a while it catches me and then I have to go through the whole reboot process, which is complated by the virtual machine running under the primary OS here.
> * I kill firefox related tasks (not firefox itself), like (in my version of
> Firefox) "Web Content", "Isolated Web Co", "Privileged Web Co", and
> "WebExtensions" (as they are named on top).
>
> I use a command like =killall -o 12h Content= -- the -o 12h option in hopes of
> not deleting the most recent versions of those files -- I'm not sure that works
> ;-)
Not sure about all of that stuff. I just exit firefox and restart it. In between I'll turn swap off then back on again (so none is being used). It'll reload the contents of the tab that it was sitting on at the time you restart it, but not the rest of them, and memory usage is a lot lower.
> I then find that my tabs still exist, in most cases with the URL, but no
> content displayed on the page. I can press <F5> on any tab (in the window) to
> reload the content. (Some tabs, especially searches (ddg and such) don't
> maintain the URL.)
I don't find it necessary to tell it to reload, it'll just do that automatically when I switch to a given tab.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
Reply to: