eBay memory leaks since 33.9.0

[geraldh]

Moderator note: split off for being a different issue.

I have been having significant memory issues causing the browser to progressively slow down and become unusable since version 33.9. Problem very apparent on Ebay. Earlier versions, e.g. 33.8.2 are fine.

To try and make things reproducible I've run some tests this evening.

Linux Mint 22.3 XFCE on an 8GB Dell 5280 i5 7th Gen laptop. Running Task Manager with nothing else open.

Palemoon 34 64 bit. Fresh Profile. No addons. One page/tab only.
From startup to ebay.com search for "laptop" go through first 10 pages of results RSS Resident Bytes 1.3GB.
Click Home and return to https://palemoon.start.me/start.
RSS Resident Bytes remains at 1.3GB.

Palemoon 33.8.2 64 bit. Fresh Profile. No addons. One page/tab only.
From startup to ebay.com search for "laptop" go through first 10 pages of results RSS Resident Bytes 0.7GB.
Click Home and return to https://palemoon.start.me/start.
RSS Resident Bytes remains at 0.7GB, actually drops a little to 0.65GB.

If I continue to search on Ebay.com RSS rises to several GB and browser become unusable with versions 33.9 and 34. Browser remains usable on 33.8.2 with RSS generally remaining under 1GB.

[MrD2018]

I agree that Ebay has become more and more unusable starting with Pale Moon version 33.9. With me, the browser starts repeatedly freezing every 6 seconds or so, presumably due to the garbage collection trying to clean up unsuccessfully, as discussed before. On earlier versions of Pale Moon it could do this after a long period of usage but now it only takes maybe 2 or 3 Ebay searches and a few item page views to make Pale Moon start locking up. Memory usage increases to more that 2GB and does not decrease until Pale Moon is restarted. I am using Pale Moon Windows 64-bit version.

[Night Wing]

@ MrD2018

I am using 64 bit linux Pale Moon 34.0.0 (GTK2) running in 64 bit MX Linux 25.1 (Infinity) Xfce.

I am using a desktop tower computer. This computer has a 12th generation Intel i7 processor in it with a processor speed of (3.60). It also has 64 GB's of memory. I have Comcast as my ISP. I have a download speed of around 355 Mbps.

The graphics card in it is a "refurbished" gaming graphics card. Since I do no gaming, this graphics card is perfect for what I do on this tower computer. Lastly, I also have uBlock Origin 1.16.6.1 enabled for eBay.

After reading your comments concerning Pale Moon and eBay, I went over to eBay. In it's Search, I typed in "desktop computers" and I got lots of listings for tower computers.

I found five that I liked and had them open in their own tabs. Five tabs open. I could scroll up and down the page on each one of them with the other four tabs placed in my open Tab Bar.

I was on eBay for around 15 minutes. No stuttering, no freezing, etc. The amount of memory it was using on eBay with five tabs open was 2.8 GB's of memory which is very good for a computer with 64 GB' of memory.

[billmcct]

I have no issues using the latest release on Win 10.
I know already that many people here will disagree with what I'm fixing to say.
Pale Moon has always been developed for Windows. It was stated from the very beging.
MC took it to heart, to try and develop with the help of other users, for "Linux".
And this is what I have to say, "THAT UR" not going to like.
"SWITCH TO WINDOWS" everyone "THINKS" Linux is SAFER but guess what?
Read MC's sig, and U will know

[Night Wing]

@ geraldh

Since Pale Moon updated to 34.0.1 earlier this morning for both windows and linux Pale Moon, I went back and performed the exact same things on eBay I did in my previous post to you using 64 bit linux Pale Moon 34.0.1 running in 64 bit MX Linux 25.1 (Infinity) Xfce.

The results were the same. No problems when scrolling, no freezing, for the same 15 minute time frame either with the same 2.8 GB's of memory used.

[geraldh]

I wonder what's happening? I have several laptops and desktops all running Mint 22.X, most of which have only 8GB ram and all have been having issues since 33.9, so I have had to revert to 33.8.2 on all of them and all are running fine. In all cases significantly more memory is being used since 33.9. One laptop has 16GB ram and that has been having the same issues, although it might take a bit longer to occur.

I do have dual boot on several machines with Windows 7,10 and 11, so I will try the same exercise on Win 10 or 11 and see if I can replicate it. I'll also use the new 34.0.1.

[Night Wing]

@ geraldh

When I am on eBay searching for "things", I usually can find what I want very quickly so I am on there usually around 15 minutes of time. But if I cannot find what I what fast enough, I have to do a "deeper dive" into searching for things.

When I do a deep dive, I am on eBay for 30 minutes of time (usually). But I never notice things slowing down either. Maybe I do not have problems since this desktop tower has 64 GB's of memory. I never check my System Monitor application in MX Linux because this computer has plenty of memory.

My backup desktop tower computer is maxed out with 32 GB's of memory, but I do not use that tower very much. Just to update things on it like browsers, other applications, bookmarks, computer updates, etc.

My next door neighbor, the one who owns the computer repair shop where I volunteer at, his wife has an online business on eBay. He told me eBay is a "very heavy" on resources.

I think she uses the Chrome browser on her Mac computer. I think, not sure, her Mac is an "all-in-one" computer. I'll have to ask her if she has any problems with eBay. I am going to guess she doesn't since she hardly ever complains about eBay on her computer.

[Behemot]

Could pretty much throw me in. I'd kinda agree that C2D P9700 is ancient HW these days, and I have a lot of stuff, and it is most likely problem of the websites themselves (not only fleebay, but 'tube and others as well) being insanely overfilled with garbage and flashing stuff of ALL kinds, instead of just the plain content I went there for.

But still, yo do think that displaying a single website, it's normal for a browser to consume 2.8 GB of RAM? I call that crazy. Point is not that you (personally) may have 64 GB at the moment, from which, <3 GB ain't nothing. Point is, 2.8 GB as an absolute number, IS crazy much. Obviously the thing is that even machines with 16 GBs ain't immune to that.

Isn't the problem with fleebay that they may be pushing some of those fancy flashy things requiring some more modern instruction sets? Where machines lacking those could somewhat compensate doing multiple different instructions for the same result, but that affects performance, and possibly leaks memory in the process?

[Night Wing]

Could pretty much throw me in. I'd kinda agree that C2D P9700 is ancient HW these days, and I have a lot of stuff, and it is most likely problem of the websites themselves (not only fleebay, but 'tube and others as well) being insanely overfilled with garbage and flashing stuff of ALL kinds, instead of just the plain content I went there for.

But still, yo do think that displaying a single website, it's normal for a browser to consume 2.8 GB of RAM? I call that crazy. Point is not that you (personally) may have 64 GB at the moment, from which, <3 GB ain't nothing. Point is, 2.8 GB as an absolute number, IS crazy much. Obviously the thing is that even machines with 16 GBs ain't immune to that.

With my 2.8 GB's out of 64 GB's of memory used, that comes out to 4.3% which is low usage wise. This is why I do not run into problems when I am on eBay, YouTube or Amazon. I also do not have lots of tabs open on those sites either. Generally two or three open if I am looking for "something specific". Most of the time, just one tab open.

I will give you an analogy of what I sometimes go through when I have people who like being on these sites, but their hardware really is too old to handle these sites anymore.

A person came into our computer repair shop and was complaining his computer was "stuttering or locking up" when he was on eBay, YouTube and Amazon. The person's computer was an old desktop tower which originally was installed with Windows 7 Home Premium since it has the originally sticker on it. The motherboard was 32 bits so that means the person's computer was maxed out with 4 GB of memory.

The person's OS they were presently using was 32 bit Puppy linux. Since I could bring up the system's specifications, when this person was on those resource heavy sites, at a minimum when I was on those sites for about one minute of time, the memory usage started at 75% and it kept rising if I stayed on those sites with just one tab open.

When I told the person they needed a better computer, new or used, they complained to me that I was just "trying to sell the person a computer". I told the person I was telling them what they "needed" because "it is what it is" if you get my drift. A lot of people like this "cannot deal with the truth or they do not want to handle the truth".

I politely told the person the desktop tower on the table behind the person had Mint, MX Linux and Debian on their respective SSD's. That computer originally came with 64 bit Windows 8 on it, has a fourth generation Intel i7 processor on the motherboard with a processor speed of 3.40 and 16 GB's of memory.

I told the person since he was used to using Puppy linux, boot into the hard drive installed with Mint and go to those site using the Firefox browser and see if that computer can handle those sites and I already knew the computer could handle those three sites in question.

When the person came back to me after demoing Mint, the person told me he "could not afford a new or used computer at the moment". I got that. But I told the person he smoked because the tower computer "reeked" of cigarette smoke smell. I asked the person how much does a carton of cigarettes cost because from some of our other customers who are chain smokers, I already knew how much it cost.

To wit. A carton of cigarettes in the US generally costs between $40 to over $100, depending heavily on the state's taxes, with high-tax states like New York seeing cartons over $80, while low-tax states like Missouri might have them around $30-$40, with premium brands always costing more which I told the person.

The person did not like my answer and left in a huff. All this person had to do was cut back on smoking to save up for a new/used computer and their problem sites would no longer be a problem.

In closing, some people can't handle the truth even when it is right in front of them.

[Gemmaugr]

Could pretty much throw me in. I'd kinda agree that C2D P9700 is ancient HW these days, and I have a lot of stuff, and it is most likely problem of the websites themselves (not only fleebay, but 'tube and others as well) being insanely overfilled with garbage and flashing stuff of ALL kinds, instead of just the plain content I went there for.

But still, yo do think that displaying a single website, it's normal for a browser to consume 2.8 GB of RAM? I call that crazy. Point is not that you (personally) may have 64 GB at the moment, from which, <3 GB ain't nothing. Point is, 2.8 GB as an absolute number, IS crazy much. Obviously the thing is that even machines with 16 GBs ain't immune to that.

Isn't the problem with fleebay that they may be pushing some of those fancy flashy things requiring some more modern instruction sets? Where machines lacking those could somewhat compensate doing multiple different instructions for the same result, but that affects performance, and possibly leaks memory in the process?

Completely agreed that some sites are needlessly bloated. When I browse reddit with old.reddit, it only takes up 600MB RAM, but if I type sh.reddit instead, it suddenly goes up to 3600MB RAM, yet the content is the exact same. It should be just simple text to read. Maybe some images here and there. three thousand six hundred megabyte is way too much for that.

[andyprough]

But I told the person he smoked because the tower computer "reeked" of cigarette smoke smell. I asked the person how much does a carton of cigarettes cost because from some of our other customers who are chain smokers, I already knew how much it cost.

To wit. A carton of cigarettes in the US generally costs between $40 to over $100, depending heavily on the state's taxes, with high-tax states like New York seeing cartons over $80, while low-tax states like Missouri might have them around $30-$40, with premium brands always costing more which I told the person.

The person did not like my answer and left in a huff. All this person had to do was cut back on smoking to save up for a new/used computer and their problem sites would no longer be a problem.

In closing, some people can't handle the truth even when it is right in front of them.

Wow! Got to wonder if all the smoke and nicotine residue weren't causing trouble for his machine. Wouldn't be surprised if the fans were all gummed up and causing it to overheat.

[Night Wing]

Wow! Got to wonder if all the smoke and nicotine residue weren't causing trouble for his machine. Wouldn't be surprised if the fans were all gummed up and causing it to overheat.

When I went inside their computer, it was "messy" from the cigarette smoke and "dust bunnies". Not too much build up from the nicotine on the fans. But I did "clean" the fans, then after, booted the computer back up and went to those three sites. The computer just could not handle those three sites anymore.

That computer's processor speed was 1.80 and combined with the 4 GB's of memory, that computer just needs to be "retired" since it has seen better days long gone now.

But the person did get a "free" cleaning of the fans since no money changed hands. Just 10 minutes of my time.

[JayByrd]

My recent experience with ebay has been just as described in Post #2 above. However, I wouldn't call it a "memory leak," and I certainly don't blame Pale Moon. In my estimation, it's more likely ebay's problem...

Off-topic:
I've been smoking while sitting at my computer in my home office for years, but I also make a point of cracking open the case of my PC every year and giving it a thorough cleaning!

By today's standards, my desktop machine is a dinosaur: a Dell tower from 2007, it sports a measly four CPU cores running at 3.0 GHz and just 12 GB of RAM. Yet, it still does everything I need it to do--including building PM from source--so I see no reason to ditch it.

[Night Wing]

I've recently posted that of the three 64 bit, 14" HP laptop computers I own, two of them are from 2012. One laptop originally came with 64 bit Windows 7 and the second laptop originally came with 64 bit Windows 8. They both have Intel i5 processors in them with a processor speed of 2.50 and both have 16 GB's of memory.

Combined with my Comcast ISP, they both can handle eBay, YouTube and Amazon. When I bought them, they were expensive by 2012's year standards when internet sites were not yet loaded up with all the crap the website maintainers now put into eBay, YouTube and Amazon.

In other words, back into 2012, I did not go "inexpensive" since I planned on keeping these computers for many years. I consider myself lucky they both can still run 64 bit linux Pale Moon today on the three sites in this topic thread without problems. Not too shabby for these old computers still in use for the last 14 years.

[Enobarbous]

Since I had nothing else to do, and to bring some technical arguments to the discussion

Test conditions: quad-core AMD A8-9600, 8 GB RAM, SSD, Windows 7, clean portable versions of Pale Moon x64 without any extensions (yes, without Ublock).
Testing mechanics: Open ebay.com, search for "laptop," open the first 4 results in new tabs, scroll down each ad page to "You may also like"
Results:
33.8.2: ~1370MB in Task Manager when 5 tabs open, ~630MB after closing all tabs and gc cc minimize
33.9.0.1: ~1390MB in Task Manager when 5 tabs open, ~600MB after closing all tabs and gc cc minimize
34.0.1: ~1370MB in Task Manager when 5 tabs open, ~596MB after closing all tabs and gc cc minimize
In all cases, high CPU usage was observed, up to 55%.

So... despite the fact that memory consumption and CPU load are unreasonably high, no noticeable differences in behavior were observed between different PM versions.

P.S. The results of memory reports are attached to the post.

[geraldh]

I'm very grateful for everyones' contributions on this issue. Version 34.0.1 does seem a little better and I have continued to play with various settings to see if they make a difference. I'm wondering if the useragent makes a difference to the version of Ebay that is served? i have used Sasuga to overide the default useragent and identify Palemoon as native on Ebay and some of the images then seem to be presented in a simpler way. My impression is that things are running a bit better, but this could just be my perception?

I've also installed a Palemoon extension called "auto free memory" which sounds a bit too good to be true, but it must do something, or it wouldn't be on the extensions page? When things go pearshaped and I'm in a hurry, I switch to Waterfox which is much faster on Ebay, but I do like my Palemoon and I'm trying to avoid the chrome monoculture .