Firefox 3 hogging 90% CPU, can anything be done about this?

[Hugh Caley]

Frank Cox wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:26:39 -0700
> Hugh Caley wrote:
>
>   
>> Problem:  After running Firefox for a time (a few minutes to 30 minutes) 
>> it will start taking 80%+ of CPU (as shown in top) and will keep taking 
>> it until I restart the browser.  This machine is running Fedora 10 
>> 32-bit. Firefox firefox-3.0.8-1 flash-plugin-10.0.22.87
>>     
>
> I actually haven't seen that problem on any of the Fedora and Centos machines
> that I look after.  At least, not in quite some time as I don't remember
> anything about it at the moment.  (Knock on wood and so on, of course.)
>
>   
>> This is usually associated with heavy CPU from npviewer.bin, hence the 
>> association with flash and flashplayer.
>>     
>
> That does make it sound like a Flash problem.
>   
>> There are several open tickets on this and similar problems on Adobe's 
>> website:
>>
>> https://bugs.adobe.com/flashplayer/
>>     
>
> That's probably the best place to take this issue up; Flash is a closed-source
> program that nobody can fix other than Adobe.
>
>   
>> I do definitely get the problem on sites such as youtube; however, I 
>> also get the problem on sites that don't have any obvious flash content, 
>> and frankly, I'm not sure which ones at this point.  Flashblock doesn't 
>> seem to catch all of them.  Still trying to find out.
>>     
>
> You might want to look at using noscript instead of Flashblock.  It does what
> Flashblock does, plus more.  Perhaps a combination of Flashblock and Flash
> content contributes to or causes the problem.  What happens if you uninstall
> Flashblock and install noscript instead?  Again, that's what I use and I
> haven't seen that problem so perhaps that's the reason why.
>
> The last Adobe run-away that I had was a rogue acroread process on Centos 5
> that ate up everything to a point that you could barely enter a single
> character on the keyboard any more.  When I eventually managed to log into it I
> killed that process and everything returned to normal.  But that was acroread,
> not Flash.
>   
I've seen posts about people who are able to just kill npviewer.bin and 
their browsers go back to normal.  However, npviewer.bin isn't always 
running when I have that problem.

I'll try noscript, but I'd REALLY like Fedora/RedHat/Mozilla people to 
work on the problem.  If you look at the adobe site there are quite a 
few logged bugs about this sort of thing, and no resolutions.  I would 
suspect Linux is a lower priority.  Some higher-end help would be good!

Hugh



-- 
Hugh Caley, Linux Administrator
Aldon Computer Group
6001 Shellmound St. Suite 600
Emeryville, CA 94608

(510) 285-8542 | hughc at aldon.com