On Sun, Jan 22, 2006 at 07:32:30PM +0100, David Schmitt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Am Sonntag, 22. Januar 2006 17:03 schrieb Justin Pryzby: > > Hello David, > > > > On Sun, Jan 22, 2006 at 04:19:38PM +0100, David Schmitt wrote: > > > I have the same problems. Here some numbers: > > > > This doesn't answer precisely Eric's question. He said: > > | Are you certain? If you open say 5 tabs, close them and then open 2 > > | more, does memory usage increase markedly? Hard numbers please. > > > > Note that it involves closing existing tabs, and then reopening back > > to the same number. > > > > This is different from opening a tab (up to a new "record" number of > > tabs) and then closing it. > > > > FF is (probably) using a memory allocation scheme whereby memory > > doesn't get freed when it is no longer used, but retains allocation > > and reuses it when it is convenient. I'm not sure I agree with this > > as a design decision, since memory allocation afaik isn't particularly > > expensive, and I agree that firefox seems to leak memory, in that it > > is *common* to end up with an FF process with a 200MB VM space. But I > > don't know that your tests show this. > > Indeed, running under valgrind showed only insignificant memory leaks (11kB) > when loading the munin page. > > After further playing I also found, that FF indeed releases the pixmaps in > the > xserver when tabs are "replacing" the closed tabs with many graphics, i.e.: 3 > open tabs, close two, open two new empty, then FF seems to release most of > the X resources (pixmaps) of the closed tabs.
For more information about Firefox and memory management, and especially FF 1.5, please have a look at http://www.chevrel.org/fr/carnet/index.php?2006/01/05/545-parametrer-firefox-par-rapport-a-sa-configuration-memoire You'll have to understand french to read it, until I have time to translate it in english. (or anyone else does it before me) The main thing to know, though, is that firefox 1.5 has added a cache of *rendered* pages, so that when you click on the back or the forward button, you get instantly the previous or next page that was displayed. As stated in the document, each of these "snapshots" eats about 4MB, and each tab keeps an history of n pages by default, n depending on your memory size. I don't know how this memory size is assumed on linux. Cheers, Mike -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
