Arch Linux

renegat

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2012-12-28

Posts: 97

[Solved] Firefox 132.0-1 oom issue (memory leak?)

Since one of the latest updates I constantly run into 'out-of-memory' problems when using firefox.
Device is a Lenovo TP11e Laptop with 4GB of RAM and 1GB SWAP space.

After some time of using firefox 132.0-1 (ublock origin / skip redirect add-ons only) the laptop becomes unresponsive / freezes.
CPU usage constantly shows 100% when the oom-killer steps in.

I can use chromium with 20+ tabs open or any other resource-intenive program with no performance impact - but firefox fills my RAM and SWAP within a few minutes completely.

Downgraded Firefox to previous version - lost my whole profile due to this *grrr* - no avail.
Completely deleted Firefox and reinstalled it - no avail.
Increased SWAP to 4GB - also flooding completely.

journalctl

Any idea what is causing this issue and how to stop it?

Edit: Typo on title - it's Firefox 132 not 138

Addenum: Even after closing Firefox the RAM in not deallocated.

Last edited by renegat (2024-11-04 10:20:00)

tekstryder

Member

Registered: 2013-02-14

Posts: 505

Re: [Solved] Firefox 132.0-1 oom issue (memory leak?)

May want to adjust your thread title as FF 138.0 is some ways away still.

seth

Member

From: Don't DM me only for attention

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 73,800

Re: [Solved] Firefox 132.0-1 oom issue (memory leak?)

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Firefo … shoot_Mode
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Firefox#Memory_limit - though first check whether you get the same behavior in the troubleshoot mode, it's probably some extension.

Completely deleted Firefox and reinstalled it - no avail.

That's not gonna work, but to be sure: this is FF from the repos, not some flatpak?

---

How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

twelveeighty

Member

Registered: 2011-09-04

Posts: 1,439

Re: [Solved] Firefox 132.0-1 oom issue (memory leak?)

Addenum: Even after closing Firefox the RAM in not deallocated.

That is very likely by design from FF. FF keeps itself running for 30s or so after the last window is closed. After you close FF, run 'ps aux | grep firefox' to see the 'waiting' process for you to start another window (which simply connects to that running process unless you start FF with --new-instance). Wait until that process has terminated. If it doesn't terminate after a minute or so, kill it and see if the memory is reclaimed.

To eliminate the (very likely) possibility of this being caused by a plugin/extension, after making sure no FF process is around, start it from a terminal as follows. This will prompt you with a dialog, just click the "Open" button. Note that this mode should terminate the process immediately once you close its last tab.

$ firefox --safe-mode

OpusOne

Member

Registered: 2023-05-31

Posts: 186

Re: [Solved] Firefox 132.0-1 oom issue (memory leak?)

I haven't really noticed any change with Firefox 132.0 compared to previous versions. It's been a memory hog for a long time.
Currently, Firefox takes 7.7GiB of RAM on my machine.

renegat

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2012-12-28

Posts: 97

Re: [Solved] Firefox 132.0-1 oom issue (memory leak?)

After several times installing and uninstalling FF and repeating every single step (replacing user.js / installing ublock-origin / changing configuration-file of ublock...) the issue paradoxically vanished by itself. FF now uses max. 90% RAM with 20+ tabs open and max 20% SWAP - and releases all when closed again. No more OOM errors till now. Weird...

MCterra

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2022-01-02

Posts: 1

Re: [Solved] Firefox 132.0-1 oom issue (memory leak?)

I had to downgrade to Firefox 129 to fix this issue. I was frequently seeing Firefox using over 18GB!! of RAM at once with relatively minimal tab counts.