Extremely simple Firefox question

Captain K

So I finally upgraded to a version of Firefox that offers you the option to "Restore Session" if you previously shut down your computer with a browser window open.

This is very cool and all, but I'm curious--what does this do to my memory situation? If I just keep restoring the previous session over and over and over, will Firefox constantly reload the cache until it strikes my computer's weakpoints for massive damage etc?


I know I could always just close the browser window and start a new one, but I'm curious exactly how lazy I can be with this version of Firefox.

Misanthropic

I'm not 100% sure, but I think it only uses the internet cache (that is being used whenever you surf, anyway). So you should be all set.

NailbunnyPD

I use this feature regularly, and see no negative impact.

I just installed the 2.0.0.7 update at home, firefox restarted with my 10 previous tabs, and is using 67M of memory.

TheSonicRetard

Oh man, if you worry about your memory, you're going to HATE firefox.

How they still haven't fixed the memory leak is beyond me.

Unicron

Sort of related, the following fix is a nice way of clearing memory from FF without having to restart it.

Mozilla wiki wrote:

To enable it, set the following pref to true using about:config:

config.trim_on_minimize

Only works on Windows though apparently.

Edit: Oh and to clarify, it trims memory when minimizing all firefox windows (i.e. your download manager window too)

Mordrack

I've been using Tab Mix Pluses version of this feature for some time and have never had any problems with it.

NailbunnyPD

I don't know what this memory leak issue is. I typically have numerous tabs open (~15), and never seem to breach 150M.

TheSonicRetard

NailbunnyPD wrote: »

I don't know what this memory leak issue is. I typically have numerous tabs open (~15), and never seem to breach 150M.

try leaving firefox open for a while.

My computer is fucking CRAWLING right now because I left firefox open last night. All night long. And it was the only thing open.

I'm typing this, and it's taking... 7 seconds to show up after I hit the key. I have 3 gb of fucking ram, my computer should NEVER crawl, let alone because I left my webbrowser open.

Mordrack

Changing the network.prefetch-next value to false in the about:config, really helps to rein in the memory hogging.

NailbunnyPD

TheSonicRetard wrote: »

NailbunnyPD wrote: »

I don't know what this memory leak issue is. I typically have numerous tabs open (~15), and never seem to breach 150M.

try leaving firefox open for a while.

My computer is fucking CRAWLING right now because I left firefox open last night. All night long. And it was the only thing open.

I'm typing this, and it's taking... 7 seconds to show up after I hit the key. I have 3 gb of fucking ram, my computer should NEVER crawl, let alone because I left my webbrowser open.

I do leave firefox open, overnight, with no negative impact, even after opening and closing many tabs. I only ever close my browser to play games on the PC. At work, firefox is running all day, no closing until I shutdown at the end of the day.

Khavall

Firefox has been running on my computer at work for 4 months now without ever being closed down.


My work computer I believe has 256 mb of RAM.

I notice no slowdown beyond what would be expected running GPO with Finale with Firefox.

TheSonicRetard

all your personal anecdotes won't change the fact that firefox does have a very well documented memory leak problem. The dev team has addressed it many times on the firefox forums.

wunderbar

I leave firefox running for a week at a time on my machine. I go through a lot of web pages(work related, and some not work related)

by the end of the week Firefox is always using over 700MB of memory.

It's actually not a memory leak, they say it's a "feature" because it keeps a cache of the last 10 pages visited of all tabs.

TheSonicRetard

wunderbar wrote: »

I leave firefox running for a week at a time on my machine. I go through a lot of web pages(work related, and some not work related)

by the end of the week Firefox is always using over 700MB of memory.

It's actually not a memory leak, they say it's a "feature" because it keeps a cache of the last 10 pages visited of all tabs.

that's not all of it. There are several theories as to what's causing the ammount of memory to balloon up. In some cases, like the one you mentioned, it's a "feature."

However, there are other reasons which are still unclear. Every few months I get fed up, end up searching google for a few hours, and wind up finding tons of new info about what people think are causing it.

DigDug2000

Captain K wrote: »

So I finally upgraded to a version of Firefox that offers you the option to "Restore Session" if you previously shut down your computer with a browser window open.

This is very cool and all, but I'm curious--what does this do to my memory situation? If I just keep restoring the previous session over and over and over, will Firefox constantly reload the cache until it strikes my computer's weakpoints for massive damage etc?


I know I could always just close the browser window and start a new one, but I'm curious exactly how lazy I can be with this version of Firefox.

The Session Restore that is built in basically takes your current tabs and windows that are open, serializes them to a string, and writes it to the disk when it closes, complete with their history and even the current web page shown in tact. I don't know what you mean when you say that reloading the cache will eventually destroy your computer.

Fast Back and Forward history are only saved for a certain number of pages. Once those are maxed out the oldest ones start getting thrown out. Slow history is cached to the disk, but only holds 50 entries for a given browser element. Those are essentially just a lits of urls, page titles, and favicons though, so saving a lot of them isn't that big of a problem. The actual cache holds data up to the number of days you've specified in prefs, but the only reason it would be used it to put images and things into the current and fast back/forward documents which are, again, limited to just a few (and I'm not even sure that Fast back/forward is reloaded with session restore).