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Firefox-esr "Web Content" 100% CPU, Ram Workaround

Graphical Environments, Managers, Multimedia & Desktop questions.
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bw123
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Firefox-esr "Web Content" 100% CPU, Ram Workaround

#1 Post by bw123 »

Strange goings on, just looking for info and gathering any links that anyone is aware of, something about "electrolysis" or e10s or something, never heard of it...

Already read these, if anyone knows more, I'm interested in the plain English explanation.
https://duckduckgo.com/html/?q=firefox+ ... eb+content

Saw this the other day, it's about sid.
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/20 ... 00277.html

I saw the same thing today on stretch, top reported firefox-esr over 45% cpu, and a process named "Web Content" at another 45% and ram extremely low... killed firefox-esr and they both disappeared. Desktop (plasma) was totally wrecked, no response, toolbar inactive, etc.

I have javascript.enabled false in about:config, but I believe java applets do run because it is installed from libreoffice dependencies. Not sure if there is a toggle for java? I have no extensions or add-ons installed or enabled. At the time, three tabs were open, including the forum, daily bikini http://www.thedailyhomepages.com/bikini/ and my local html startpage.

I found and decreased the "content process limit" setting to 2 instead of four to test. I'd really like to know how to figure out what page I might have viewed that could cause this.

Code: Select all

$ apt policy firefox-esr
firefox-esr:
  Installed: 60.2.2esr-1~deb9u1
$ apt policy
Package files:
 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     release a=now
 500 http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates/main amd64 Packages
     release v=9,o=Debian,a=stable,n=stretch,l=Debian-Security,c=main,b=amd64
     origin security.debian.org
 500 http://http.us.debian.org/debian stretch-updates/main amd64 Packages
     release o=Debian,a=stable-updates,n=stretch-updates,l=Debian,c=main,b=amd64
     origin http.us.debian.org
 500 http://http.us.debian.org/debian stretch/main amd64 Packages
     release v=9.5,o=Debian,a=stable,n=stretch,l=Debian,c=main,b=amd64
     origin http.us.debian.org
Pinned packages:
$ apt policy plasma-desktop
plasma-desktop:
  Installed: 4:5.8.6-1
Machine is an old atom n450 single core dual thread, 2 gigs Ram, intel graphics, ssd, 2 GB swap.
Last edited by bw123 on 2018-10-13 13:11, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Firefox-esr and "Web Content" 100% CPU, Ram

#2 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

bw123 wrote:Strange goings on, just looking for info and gathering any links that anyone is aware of, something about "electrolysis" or e10s or something, never heard of it...
If you think your problems are due to e10s then you could try disabling it by navigating to about:config and toggling browser.tabs.remote.autostart to false — check the "Multiprocess Windows" entry in about:support (zero means that e10s is disabled).
bw123 wrote:I believe java applets do run because it is installed from libreoffice dependencies
^ I don't understand what you mean by this, can you explain more please?

Do you still have the problem if you enable javascript in about:config?
:o That's not at all what I expected, you sly old dog :lol:

EDIT: bookmarked! :mrgreen:
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Re: Firefox-esr and "Web Content" 100% CPU, Ram

#3 Post by bw123 »

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:
bw123 wrote:Strange goings on, just looking for info and gathering any links that anyone is aware of, something about "electrolysis" or e10s or something, never heard of it...
If you think your problems are due to e10s then you could try disabling it by navigating to about:config and toggling browser.tabs.remote.autostart to false — check the "Multiprocess Windows" entry in about:support (zero means that e10s is disabled).
Hey thanks for the config setting I will check out browser.tabs.remote.autostart I never heard of it before. Everytime they update ff I try to go thru and find out what they added or reverted from my settings in about:config but that panel is worse than windows registry. I really can't stand it, why can't we use config files on ff like normal people?
Head_on_a_Stick wrote:
bw123 wrote:I believe java applets do run because it is installed from libreoffice dependencies
^ I don't understand what you mean by this, can you explain more please?
Well, I'm not sure, but when the new ver came out, and I found all the extensions broken, I checked into disabling java and running with no addons, and it seems that java will run if it is installed? Could be wrong?
Head_on_a_Stick wrote: Do you still have the problem if you enable javascript in about:config?
Well, I'm not going to use firefox until I find out more about this, here's the bug.
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo ... bug=909818
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Re: Firefox-esr and "Web Content" 100% CPU, Ram

#4 Post by stevepusser »

Java and javascript don't have anything to do with each other other than the string "java".

As far as I know, the Java browser plugin won't work in Firefox Quantum, anyway.
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Re: Firefox-esr and "Web Content" 100% CPU, Ram

#5 Post by bw123 »

stevepusser wrote:Java and javascript don't have anything to do with each other other than the string "java".

As far as I know, the Java browser plugin won't work in Firefox Quantum, anyway.
I understand the difference between javascript and java.

I was not talking about a java browser plugin, I have no plugins, addons, or extensions installed or enabled. I noticed that some video sites play video thru the browser even though I have javascripts and webgl disabled. There must be some mechanism that allows this content to play thru the browser, but I don;t know what it is.

I might suspect that whatever this mechanism is that plays video might be running the "Web Content" process, but I really don;t know how to duplicate it other than maybe repeat my entire browsing history for several days.

Then, even if I can duplicate it, what do I do to stop it? Why would this be necessary on a stable debian system with security support?
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Re: Firefox-esr and "Web Content" 100% CPU, Ram

#6 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

bw123 wrote:I saw the same thing today on stretch, top reported firefox-esr over 45% cpu, and a process named "Web Content" at another 45% and ram extremely low... killed firefox-esr and they both disappeared. Desktop (plasma) was totally wrecked, no response, toolbar inactive, etc.
Were you able to switch to a console (TTY) screen?
bw123 wrote:that panel is worse than windows registry. I really can't stand it, why can't we use config files on ff like normal people?
You're preaching to the choir there d00d, I totally agree.
bw123 wrote:Well, I'm not going to use firefox until I find out more about this, here's the bug.
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo ... bug=909818
That's for the non-esr ff version under sid, although I suppose both use e10s.
bw123 wrote:I noticed that some video sites play video thru the browser even though I have javascripts and webgl disabled. There must be some mechanism that allows this content to play thru the browser, but I don;t know what it is.
HTML5.
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Re: Firefox-esr and "Web Content" 100% CPU, Ram

#7 Post by None1975 »

bw123 wrote:Well, I'm not going to use firefox until I find out more about this, here's the bug.
One of the solutions to this problem could be removing most of fonts-* packages,resetting fontconfig to it's default config from dpkg and recreating the font-cache. It's described here.
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Re: Firefox-esr and "Web Content" 100% CPU, Ram

#8 Post by bw123 »

Thanks I also found these config settings to do some research on... I already have a pretty huge /etc/firefox/firefox.js to turn off a lot of stuff. I guess there are a lot of new settings.

media.ffmpeg.enabled
media.ffvpx.enabled
media.ogg.enabled
media.mp4.enabled
media.apple.mp4.enabled
media.webm.enabled

I like the new ff pretty good, and normally don't care about security too much, just as a hobby. I'd like to keep it from crashing though, or maxing out the cpu, especially when on battery. It's a real drag. I don;t want any content to run, or download because I'm on limited bandwidth.

And I'd like to do it with only pkgs from stable, no external addons or extensions, pretty tall order, huh?
Last edited by bw123 on 2018-10-11 13:58, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Firefox-esr and "Web Content" 100% CPU, Ram

#9 Post by bw123 »

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:
bw123 wrote:I saw the same thing today on stretch, top reported firefox-esr over 45% cpu, and a process named "Web Content" at another 45% and ram extremely low... killed firefox-esr and they both disappeared. Desktop (plasma) was totally wrecked, no response, toolbar inactive, etc.
Were you able to switch to a console (TTY) screen?
No, could not open a window or get out of X, luckily had a terminal open and killed it then cleanly shutdown -h now.
Head_on_a_Stick wrote: HTML5.
thanks again, I wasn't hoping to do all this until after buster was stable. This is going to interfere with my 0ad, openttd, and my wesnoth addiction.
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Re: Firefox-esr and "Web Content" 100% CPU, Ram

#10 Post by bw123 »

Okay, whatever it is, I got it turned off somehow. I found that firefox-esr was running 5 pids with command

Code: Select all

$ pidof firefox-esr
Setting browser.tabs.remote.autostart false didn't change anything, about:support still showed multiprocess window 1/1 and five pids plus processes named "Window Content" and other processes like "file:// Content" and very high cpu use, machine running kind of hot too, nearly 70c instead of the normal 52c. No active cooling on notebook...

Anyhow, I found some older pref settings I saved from an icecat link, I don't have the link. They are very similar to this https://pastebin.com/RpbAxgx5
After putting them in /etc/firefox-esr/custom_pref.js, closing the browser, deleting prefs.js from the profile in ~/.mozilla/firefox/,,, open the browser again, disable javascript and all the media.WHATEVR.enabled stuff.

I have only one pid again for firefox-esr. Machine runs nice, pages load quick, no content runs or downloads.
about:support shows "Multiprocess Windows 0/1 (Disabled)"

What I don;t understand is the time it took for the problem to show up. I last upgraded firefox-esr on 10-3, before that on 9-25, from the original upgrade to v 60 on 9/09
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