Firefox Content Processes

Hi.

My Firefox upgraded to version 57 (Xubuntu 16.04) and I noticed tremendous RAM usage, up to 1 GB sometimes, due to many active processes. I checked task manager and found 2 or 3 processes along with FF's main one.


I didn't know what these were until I found the answer in Preferences/Performance


It was preset to 4 processes.
But even after reducing if to 1 I still have 2 processes always running and at least 500 mb Ram usage.

How is your experience in this department?

 

Try

Code:

top -n1 -o %MEM

What do you see?

I get something like this:

Code:

Tasks: 193 total,   1 running, 192 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  8.4 us,  3.7 sy,  0.0 ni, 86.4 id,  1.2 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.3 si,  0.0 st
KiB Mem :  8039612 total,  3506760 free,  1207348 used,  3325504 buff/cache
KiB Swap:  8117244 total,  8117244 free,        0 used.  6390008 avail Mem

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND            
 9761 vasa1     20   0 2402304 297396 116668 S   0.0  3.7   0:23.49 firefox              
 1517 vasa1     20   0  0.254t 193676  94268 S   0.0  2.4   1:44.77 plasmashell            
 9885 vasa1     20   0 1842416 168508  93592 S   0.0  2.1   0:11.25 Web Content            
 1666 vasa1     20   0 1455272 157880  17740 S   0.0  2.0   0:13.23 mysqld                
 1469 vasa1     20   0 1313700 153724 107776 S   0.0  1.9   0:10.37 kded5                  
 1570 vasa1     20   0 2198208 152324  55308 S   0.0  1.9   0:24.39 dropbox                
 1515 vasa1     20   0  0.251t 113500  70608 S   0.0  1.4   0:06.89 krunner                
 1510 vasa1     20   0 3211924 108156  64324 S   6.7  1.3   6:12.03 kwin_x11              
 1104 root      20   0  338048  82800  43260 S   6.7  1.0   7:23.41 Xorg

I have just three extensions. Stylus, uBlock Origin and Resurrect Pages.


And I've not altered Content Processes from the default.

 

Yes, FF 57 uses a lot more memory than previous versions. In my case (Windows 10, FF x64), it´s normally 1-1.2 GB. In Task manager there are 7 processes, the "Content process limit" is 4 by default.

So far, not a problem for me.

 

There are better tools to measure ram usage:
https://github.com/pixelb/ps_mem

 

Thanks.

 

mine is set to 6. by random, could be 7 (max) or 3, but never 1.

extensions are bundled on one or more tasks, tabs also - but never together.
its mozillas solution to avoid hevay memory usages vs performance and stability.
chrome/chromium has bundeld extensions also on processes, but each tab has its own process which results in more memory usage.

when a tab crashes only the tab crashes and not the whole firefox.
if a child process crashes only the tabs on it die.

 

Nice - I wasn't aware of that one. Thanks!

 

idd - its called about:memory

 

I'm not actually using FF 57, but I did check it out and from what I understood is that if you set it to 1 process, you will see a maximum of 4 FF processes (1 parent + 3 child), and this should result in way less RAM usage when compared to Chrome/Opera/Vivaldi.