Re: What's Up With Firefox & RAM?

On Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:47:15 +1200
Came this utterance formulated by Perry Spiller to my mailbox:

> 
> Recently, I've noticed FF hogging memory
> like you wouldn't believe! Like two-thirds
> to three-quarters of one my 1 Gb RAM.
> 
> Doesn't seem to matter about which or
> how many web pages are open.
> 
> If I kill FF, then restart after a few moments,
> the start-up RAM call is modest - less than
> 100MB, with no pages open.
> 
> Then it just seems to progressively build up
> to two-thirds to three-quarters of 1 Gb,
> slowing the computer down badly. So
> I kill it again and start over.
> 
> The one thing that seems to be new is the
> server-forced upgrade by skype, which
> put a dialler into FF. I'll remove that to
> see if it makes a difference.

Extensions are a known memory issue, so this is a good idea.

I seem to remember you had an IPCop box? If so you can turn on and use
the proxy server "squid" in that box and reduce the ammount of cache
that Firefox uses itself. E Drummond's support page tells you how to
reduce the cache. Firefox and IE on all boxes will need to be pointed at
squid on IPCop as it's proxy. Squid will then cache common web images
and it's disk space is adjustable from the IPCop SHTML control panel.

I als recommend the "Adblock plus" extension on Firefox which will let
you block many flash and picture ads reducing both memory use and
download time on websites. You can use asterisk wildcards to block whole
sites if you wish like "*doubleclick.*" which will catch
doubleclick.com/page-x and ads.doubleclick.com.au/page-y

-- 
Michael

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall
be well

 - Julian of Norwich 1342 - 1416