Extremely busy if left idle

Users and developers helping users with generic and technical Pale Moon issues on all operating systems.

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moonbob69
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Re: Extremely busy if left idle

Unread post by moonbob69 » 2019-02-21, 23:20

If by partitions you mean real hard disk partitions, no "swap partition".
I tried increasing the "save file" size, but that only comes into play when saving user data upon exit; "pupswap.swp" is apparently set by the OS loaded from the CD.

"df" is interesting; 9 filesystems, including 5 /dev/ (with 2 real partitions), tmpfs, unionfs, and devtmpfs and shmfs, both empty. Space is not an issue.

KlarkKentThe3rd
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Re: Extremely busy if left idle

Unread post by KlarkKentThe3rd » 2019-03-06, 05:42

Question: if Shift+Esc "stops everything", what does it mean? Will all scripts and processes remain frozen/aborted until I restart, or is Shift+Esc a command that just stops currently running scripts, but not future ones?

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Moonchild
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Re: Extremely busy if left idle

Unread post by Moonchild » 2019-03-06, 09:39

Once again, Shift+Esc does not stop scripts. It stops all navigation/download activity (and animated gifs). This stop will endure until the next activity causes new traffic.
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KlarkKentThe3rd
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Re: Extremely busy if left idle

Unread post by KlarkKentThe3rd » 2019-03-06, 10:19

Alright then. Still useful to reduce out of control CPU spikes.

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cosmo666
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Re: Extremely busy if left idle

Unread post by cosmo666 » 2019-03-22, 00:05

I have been noticing that Palemoon seems to keep running extensively if left alone with multiple tabs open. Thus far, I've tended to attribute that to the mix of webpages loaded, since it seems to have become standard practice for many commercial websites to continue their self-serving behind-the-scenes network activity as long as the browser session will allow them to.

I remembered reading something about a keyboard sequence which "stops all browser activity" (or something along those lines), and finally tracked down this thread, and the supposed key sequence: Shift + Esc. I say 'supposed', because in the following case, after entering that sequence (several times), the website just continued downloading, and Palemoon just continued maintaining its neck-in-neck position at the top of the 'top' list on this Xubuntu 16.04 workstation.

URL of test case website:https://download.cnet.com/Calls-Blackli ... 49412.html
Snapshot of 'top' display...
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
11184 dvroot 20 0 2563824 469268 77480 R 86.0 11.9 5475:55 thunderbird
6274 dvroot 20 0 2845956 655368 112940 S 27.6 16.7 23:41.15 palemoon
1397 dvroot 20 0 521124 83768 67428 S 7.6 2.1 152:28.26 Xorg
13953 dvroot 20 0 528820 21588 12232 S 2.0 0.5 1:08.85 /usr/bin/termin
8168 root 20 0 41936 3796 3052 R 0.7 0.1 0:03.06 top
1 root 20 0 185556 5076 3224 S 0.0 0.1 0:08.18 systemd
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.09 kthreadd
Re: Tab-level hibernate

I have yet to find any other browser with this feature. Even went to the trouble of installing Vivaldi, since someone posting on this forum said Vivaldi could do it. Unfortunately, Vivaldi appears to be a 'pseudo-open-source' browser, which is actually a customized front-end on the main google (chrome?) codebase. Also doesn't appear to 'want' to embrace any existing open-browser standards. So, all I can do is highly recommend that the PaleMoon/Basilisk team give some thought to how such a feature might be implemented. In my view, it is sorely needed.

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Re: Extremely busy if left idle

Unread post by vannilla » 2019-03-22, 01:07

cosmo666 wrote:I say 'supposed', because in the following case, after entering that sequence (several times), the website just continued downloading
As said above your post:
Moonchild wrote:Once again, Shift+Esc does not stop scripts. It stops all navigation/download activity (and animated gifs). This stop will endure until the next activity causes new traffic.
cosmo666 wrote: Re: Tab-level hibernate

I have yet to find any other browser with this feature. [...] So, all I can do is highly recommend that the PaleMoon/Basilisk team give some thought to how such a feature might be implemented. In my view, it is sorely needed.
There's an add-on to unload unused tabs.

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cosmo666
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Re: Extremely busy if left idle

Unread post by cosmo666 » 2019-03-22, 02:02

Vanilla wrote:
Once again, Shift+Esc does not stop scripts. It stops all navigation/download activity (and animated gifs). This stop will endure until the next activity causes new traffic.
The original reference was just: "Shift Esc already does that". It was amended later to acknowledge that it doesn't actually "stop all activity". Which is really beside the point, because the issue under discussion is: "How to stop all browser activity" (at a minimum), but ideally, how to stop all browser activity on a given tab.

Re: "Unloading tabs..."

This does not solve the problem. The goal is, emphatically, to get the tab to stop using up resources once its loaded. I may have a couple dozen tabs loaded, each of which may contain technical information I need for reference purposes while trying to solve some very specific problem of mine. Once they're loaded, I want (need) them to stop doing anything at all, even if I return to the tab to re-examine the content. I may have other tabs which are intended to continue executing background tasks, so a global command that shuts down all activity of the browser doesn't work either. (Case in point: a website administration program responsible for multiple local servers.)

Here's the thing I don't get: the folks who went to the trouble to create PaleMoon obviously want to create the best-possible browser they can. I, and the other folks who raised this issue, are trying to provide the kind of feedback one would assume they need, and want to hear (and I'm referencing the drop down menu on the 'Help' menu item for PaleMoon labeled: 'Submit Feedback'). Instead, those providing the 'feedback' are met with brush-offs, and occasionally outright hostility by the developers, challenging the 'merits' of the stated problem. Why ask for feedback if they don't want to hear it?

In fairness, they're certainly not the only ones. This is a mindset which has afflicted technical/engineering consortia for as long as they've existed. It's called: "Not invented here..." syndrome.

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Re: Extremely busy if left idle

Unread post by KlarkKentThe3rd » 2019-03-22, 04:59

Basically all that, only condensed to "make Palemoon consume less CPU and RAM resources" to get an edge over Firefox/Waterfox. It is not an unreasonable thing to ask for.

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Re: Extremely busy if left idle

Unread post by Isengrim » 2019-03-22, 11:10

KlarkKentThe3rd wrote:It is not an unreasonable thing to ask for.
It is also not a simple thing to ask for.

Trying to increase the performance of a complex piece of software is like trying to make a car more fuel efficient. It is quite a complex task and will likely involve many small improvements being made over time rather than one magic change that fixes everything. It requires a lot of investigation and testing under many conditions and on many kinds of hardware.

Additionally, keep in mind that YMMV wildly depending on what sites you use, what extensions you use, and what hardware you use. I have never encountered any unusual CPU usage like the ones being described that could not be explained by heavy JS-intensive sites or add-ons.
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Re: Extremely busy if left idle

Unread post by vannilla » 2019-03-22, 12:45

If you want to stop a single document then install eMatrix, configure it so that everything in that document is blocked (mostly third-part resources) and then reload the page.
If you can't do that then nothing can be done, as the majority of the resources taken by the browser are actually used by websites rather than the browser itself, and the only people that can reduce usage are the webmasters.

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cosmo666
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Re: Extremely busy if left idle

Unread post by cosmo666 » 2019-03-22, 17:41

Vanilla wrote:
If you want to stop a single document then install eMatrix, configure it so that everything in that document is blocked (mostly third-part resources) and then reload the page.
Thanks for this recommendation. It looks like a good place to start.

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moonbob69
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Re: Extremely busy if left idle

Unread post by moonbob69 » 2019-03-28, 00:45

Some time ago I loaded PM then immediately closed all tabs. The next day, it was not using any CPU, but upon opening a tab, I experienced the "limited time freeze" for 5 min or so. (ie, would have been a freeze/crash if I did not suspect that it would start up again.)

Perhaps Moonchild can explain what the difference is between Shift+Esc and the red "stop" button when initially downloading a page. Many years ago, the "stop" in Firefox actually had an immediate effect; in PM now, it doesn't seem to do anything. Perhaps that is because by the time a problem is noticed, now it is scripts that are transferring all the stuff.

Looking in Tools->Preferences, I don't see an option to not load javascripts. Does HTML still have a (timed) Reload element not related to javascript that can appear in pages? Does that override the user Shift+Esc command?

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