Firefox use lot of cpu

Question

I have a notebook nb510 Toshiba with Ubuntu 12.04 and firefox 22.0 with extensions like addock-plus, x-notifier, download helper, xmarks. Sometimes it's take more cpu than 100% This information of firefox:

@nb510:~$ top

top - 02:23:57 up 18 min,  2 users,  load average: 0.42, 0.39, 0.36
Tasks: 153 total,   1 running, 152 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  3.9%us,  0.8%sy,  0.0%ni, 95.2%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   2047344k total,   741132k used,  1306212k free,    54984k buffers
Swap:  2068352k total,        0k used,  2068352k free,   370208k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND   
 2320 john      20   0  576m 117m  36m S   117  5.9   1:31.67 firefox          
 1015 root      20   0  120m  39m 7588 S    9  2.0   2:02.09 Xorg     
 2088 john      20   0 92592  15m  11m S    7  0.8   0:11.30 gnome-terminal     
 2183 john      20   0  2852 1176  888 R    1  0.1   0:08.58 top                
    9 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:06.83 kworker/1:0        
    1 root      20   0  3636 2052 1316 S    0  0.1   0:01.80 init               
    2 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kthreadd           
    3 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.02 ksoftirqd/0        
    6 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 migration/0        
    7 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.24 watchdog/0         
    8 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 migration/1        
   10 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.13 ksoftirqd/1        
   12 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.05 watchdog/1         
   13 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 migration/2        
   15 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.03 ksoftirqd/2        
   16 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 watchdog/2         
   17 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 migration/3        
   18 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.88 kworker/3:0

and this from firefox

  Paramètres de base de l'application

        Nom
        Firefox

        Version
        22.0

        Agent utilisateur
        Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux i686; rv:22.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/22.0

        Configuration de compilation

          about:buildconfig

  Extensions

        Nom

        Version

        Activée

        ID

        British English Dictionary
        1.19.1
        true
        [email protected]

        DownloadHelper
        4.9.17
        true
        {b9db16a4-6edc-47ec-a1f4-b86292ed211d}

        Element Hiding Helper pour Adblock Plus
        1.2.3
        true
        [email protected]

        Ubuntu Firefox Modifications
        2.6
        true
        [email protected]

        Xmarks
        4.2.1
        true
        [email protected]

        X-notifier
        3.3.3
        true
        {37fa1426-b82d-11db-8314-0800200c9a66}

  Préférences modifiées importantes

      Nom

      Valeur

        accessibility.typeaheadfind.flashBar
        0

        browser.cache.disk.capacity
        1048576

        browser.cache.disk.smart_size_cached_value
        1048576

        browser.cache.disk.smart_size.first_run
        false

        browser.places.smartBookmarksVersion
        4

        browser.startup.homepage
        http://www.google.fr/ig

        browser.startup.homepage_override.buildID
        20130627161504

        browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone
        22.0

        dom.mozApps.used
        true

        extensions.lastAppVersion
        22.0

        network.cookie.prefsMigrated
        true

        places.database.lastMaintenance
        1375143077

        places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages
        52413

        plugin.disable_full_page_plugin_for_types
        application/pdf

        plugin.importedState
        true

        privacy.sanitize.migrateFx3Prefs
        true

        security.warn_viewing_mixed
        false

        storage.vacuum.last.index
        0

        storage.vacuum.last.places.sqlite
        1375140331

  Accélération graphique

        Description de la carte
        VMware, Inc. -- Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 0x300)

        Fenêtres avec accélération graphique
        0/1 Basic Bloqué pour la version de votre pilote graphique.

        ID du périphérique
        Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 0x300)

        ID du vendeur
        VMware, Inc.

        Rendu WebGL
        Bloqué pour la version de votre pilote graphique.

        Version du pilote
        2.1 Mesa 8.0.4

        AzureCanvasBackend
        cairo

        AzureContentBackend
        none

        AzureFallbackCanvasBackend
        none

  JavaScript

        Ramasse-miettes incrémentiel
        true

  Accessibilité

        Activée
        false

        Empêcher l'accessibilité
        0

  Versions des bibliothèques

        Version minimale attendue

        Version utilisée

        NSPR
        4.9.6
        4.9.6

        NSS
        3.14.3.0 Basic ECC
        3.14.3.0 Basic ECC

        NSSSMIME
        3.14.3.0 Basic ECC
        3.14.3.0 Basic ECC

        NSSSSL
        3.14.3.0 Basic ECC
        3.14.3.0 Basic ECC

        NSSUTIL
        3.14.3.0
        3.14.3.0

Thank you for your help

Solution 1

It seems to me that you aren't using the Hardware Acceleration (which could lead to high CPU consumption, or your hardware don't support it). If you have your Video drivers updated and correctly configured, you could force Firefox to use Hardware acceleration:

1. Open about:config, accept that you know what you are doing (technically it's me)
2. Search for layers.acceleration.force-enabled. If it's not created, right click an empty area, hit New > Boolean, and name it as layers.acceleration.force-enabled.
3. Right click layers.acceleration.force-enabled and hit Toggle.
4. Restart firefox and check your CPU consumption, should be manageable now.

How to know if you have HW-Accel

1. Open up a terminal.
2. Run sudo apt-get install mesa-utils
3. Once it finish run glxinfo | grep render

4. It should have a line that reads:

   direct rendering: Yes

   OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on ATI RV515 (this line could be whatever)

If it's says No or the second line says Software rasterizer it means you are doomed needs to configure your video card (if it supports HWA) or buying a new shinny card.

Solution 2

Quite possible is that the root of the slowdown is one or several of installed FF extensions. Try disabling them one by one to see if they cause the problem. Initially, you may disable all of them to see if FF consumes significantly less resources in your case (there is an option in Help menu Restart with Add-ons Disabled...)

See a detailed instruction here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-extensions-themes-to-fix-problems

UPD: There is a list of known problematic FF extensions, to ease problem detection: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Problematic_extensions

Solution 3

I found the posting of @Hadi in a similar thread. [Link deleted because offline]

Try this solution

1. Open Firefox.
2. Type 'about:Config' into the address line and hit Go or return. This takes you into the Firefox expert Config menu.

3. See if there is an entry called browser.cache.disk.capacity.

4. If Yes then modify the value to 16384, close Firefox and restart Firefox.

5. If No right click somewhere on the about:Config page and select Integer. Create an Integer entry called 'browser.cache.memory.capacity' and set it to 16384. Close Firefox and restart Firefox.

If this solution not work then install an AdBlock extension such as Adblock Plus

Comments

[Bach]

Why should the value be 16384?