Memory leak?

[markyp]

I've all but dumped Safari / Firefox in favour of the SP releases, but one thing is still driving me insane - it appears to hi-jack my MacBook as the day goes on. Check with Activity Monitor, and it seems to double its use of memory from morning through to the afternoon, to the point where other apps as sluggish and OW itself requires a force quit.

Am I alone here, or is there actually a problem?

Thanks,

Mark

[Len Case]

We haven't done a memory leak pass recently. Also we haven't verified our cache settings so there might be an issue there as well.

[Forrest]

I'm still getting the slowdown I've seen in most (all?) of the SPs. I'm going to restart OW after this post. When I type, there's even a lag.

I know this isn't the most accurate measure but:
24158 OmniWeb 71.5% 3:32:02 22 324 5304 939M+ 193M 1022M+ 1.68G

It's using almost 1GB of real and 1.68GB of virtual. And without even surfing, it's using 71.5% of the CPU on a dual 2.7.

[macsterdam]

I'm experiencing similar memory leaks as well. In no time OW is using 300 - 400 mb real memory. Back to Safari for now :-(

[Twomacs]

Interesting on my G4 powerbook after 11 days of up time and Omniweb always in use I have 0% CPU usage (when doing nothing) 239mb of real memory usage and 1,57gb of virtual memory. This is with SP11. My mem & CPU usage seems very different but why?

[Forrest]

It varies based on the sites you visit. If I go to newegg.com, I immediately get high CPU usage after viewing a few pages. If I stay on just a few sites, I can have OW up for days.

[JKT]

One of my workspaces consistently triggers abnormally high CPU usage (it will jump between 20 to 40% and make everything very sluggish) and it's been doing it ever since the first sp. The only way to clear it is to quit and re-launch. If I avoid that Workspace, it doesn't seem to happen as often. Unfortunately, that particular Workspace is one I visit a lot, so I am unable to have OmniWeb open for more than about 30 minutes a go...

[gamedayhero]

Yes, there is most definitely a memory leak. After a few hours of using OW, my entire system slows to a crawl. After quitting OW, everything is back to normal. I've been able to confirm this many times.

[Twomacs]

It varies based on the sites you visit. If I go to newegg.com, I immediately get high CPU usage after viewing a few pages. If I stay on just a few sites, I can have OW up for days.

Interesting, if I go to newegg and open up a dozen or so tabs and flick between them I seem to use up around 25 - 30 mb or real memory but closing the tabs seems to release it all again. The cpu usage with 13 tabs open increases to 5-6% on the pages with flashing publicity but remains around 2-3% on those with out it.

Is it possibile that the problem is connected to the processor type, I don't see how but I just don't seem to have the same problems as some others here?

[markyp]

My original post failed to include specs - I'm running a MacBook Pro with 1GB RAM and a 1.83GHz processor.

Since my first post, I've compared OW SP11 to the version running on my PPC Mac Mini - the latter, even after running for two hours and opening lots of tabs, seems to never go above 85MB of real memory. Today at the office, SP11 on the Intel MBP was eating over 160MB (and climbing) before I quit.

Maybe it is a processor issue?

[Forrest]

and now newegg.com is playing nice :\

I haven't been able to find a clear way to reproduce the issue. I've just sent in samples when OW grinds to a halt.

[Burbank]

FWIW, All of the recent SP releases have been "running away with my CPU". Everything's good for a while. Then, I notice my CPU pinned at 100% (as it is right now). If I open Activity Monitor, it tells me OmniWeb is using all available CPU time. Quitting and relaunching seems to "reset" CPU utilization.

iBook G4 (14 inch) Mid-2005
System Version: Mac OS X 10.4.6 (8|127)
CPU: 1.42 GHz G4
Memory: 1.5 GB
100 GB Hard Drive
ATI Mobility Radeon 9550 32 MB

Dave Burbank

[Forrest]

It's been getting a little better for me, but I'm guessing that's because I've been putting trouble sites in a less often used workspace.

[placebo]

Just wondering if people are seeing OW 5.5b2 hogging resources. Earlier today, it seemed to bring my system to a crawl. Unfortunately, I didn't think to look at how much memory OW was using before I quit it, but the continuous disk accesses and the presence of five swapfiles, an unusually large number on my PowerBook in my experience, suggest to me OW was using a lot of RAM.

[Stormchild]

OW 5.5b2 continues to have problems with its real and virtual memory sizes growing ever larger. Closing all windows and tabs does not reduce the memory usage; the only way to shrink it back down is to quit and relaunch the browser. I generally end up having to two that 4 or 5 times a day. Meanwhile, many of my other apps are often left open for a week or two and their memory usage never gets out of control.

The virtual memory size is a particular concern; I find it often grows to 1.5 - 2 GB, and meanwhile the amount of free space on my drive starts to dwindle. Quitting OmniWeb only seems to recover a small amount of that disk space; I won't get it all back until I log out or restart the computer. As such, some of that may just be a problem with the virtual memory system in OS X (or could be a problem of me not fully understanding how it all works). But the fact that OW's virtual size often climbs to 2 GB while programs like Photoshop and Illustrator are sitting at around 600 MB, with quite a few documents open, makes me suspect that there's a leak in OW somewhere.

[khb]

on iMac G5 (iSight) 1.9GHz 512MB 10.4.7 Build 8J135

With OW launched with Google homepage 41MB in Activity Monitor
OW opened with 20 tabs OW uses 195MB

With Firefox with same Google homepage 46MB
Firefox open with same 20 tabs as before 158MB

With Safari with same Google homepage 33MB
Safari open with same 20 tabs 144MB

+++ after a system restart +++

OW Google homepage - 42MB
OW 20 tabs - 193MB

Firefox Google homepage - 35
Firefox 20 tabs - 145

Safari Google homepage - 16!
Safari 20 tabs - 122!

+++

It seems OW does not use memory as efficiently as Firefox or Safari. I even have ad filtering turned on in OW (but not in Firefox or Safari). So OW is not even loading everything that FF and Safri are loading.

[Forrest]

Keep in mind going by what Activity Monitor says isn't going to give you accurate results. Apps in OS X don't give back memory until another app needs it. So unless your free memory count is at 0, there likely isn't a problem.

This isn't to say there isn't a memory leak in OW.

[khb]

Yes, good point. Still, when I am using OW I often experience general system slowdown, and a check with Activity Monitor does show that I indeed have no free memory left. This happens frequently, and is not something I experience before with Safari or Firefox.

I've been evaulating OW for a few weeks now. Now other browsers feel so old and incomplete. So I've almost bought into the OW vision. Still, in this day and age where you can get good browsers for free, one expects OW to be very polished in every way.

My impression so far is that OW is a greaet app with a few wrinkles here and there.

Regards,

[Forrest]

Yes, good point. Still, when I am using OW I often experience general system slowdown

I do as well, but it's generally CPU usage that shoots way up.

So I've almost bought into the OW vision. Still, in this day and age where you can get good browsers for free, one expects OW to be very polished in every way.

Don't forget, this is a beta :)

[Len Case]

One of the bugs in my queue is to look at the memory usage for OmniWeb so this is definately something we will be investigating.

[daiyi666@yahoo.com]

One of the bugs in my queue is to look at the memory usage for OmniWeb so this is definately something we will be investigating.

Thanks Len. This is why I purchased a license: trust that you'll fix issues that arise and listen to users.

PS The activity monitor just posted a 268 MB allocation of memory to OW. If this is in fact accurate, I am somewhat concerned, though I profess to not understanding exactly how OS X allocates memory either. The system did not grind to a halt, but the usage nevertheless appears rather high.

[solo_b8]

unfortunately for me, OW has been hogging so many resources and crashing so much as a result, that I have just recalled Safari from retirement. I often leave things going for days at a time. I finally realised that OW was eating up memory and sometimes CPU until my intel iMac was behaving like my G3 iMac! Please do something about it because I'd grown to love the GUI and features.......

[michele]

I must say the same is happening to me: I reboot my PB every once in a while (usually once or twice a month) and after a couple of days OW starts to eat up resources, then becomes unresponsive and finally crashes. Any clues?

Usually, OW sits on 300-400MB of RAM, but don't eat much CPU. Unfortunately, when I have it running for a few days it sometimes starts to use 50% CPU even if it is idle...

[Forrest]

The CPU hogging is a known issue. If you can find pages/sites that crank the CPU way up, use the Feedback option within OW to send a link to the OG.

Sites with a lot of Flash (eg, Google Video) and JavaScript are often culprits. 5.5.1 should fix a lot of the issues.

As far as RAM usage goes, keep track of how much RAM OW is actually using, not what's allocated to it (eg, what Activity Monitor shows.) The OG recently stated OW has been tested for memory leaks and there aren't any.

[m-rick]

the 5.5.1 beta 1 looks to be even slower and using more memory. it has increased till 141 Mb of RAM ! for exactly the same pages on the 5.5 it is already around 100 Mb of RAM and Safari with exactly the same pages open plus using Safari Stand it's only 25~30 Mb and Camino around 40~45 Mb.

(And to upload this picture with ImageShack it was almost intantaneous with Camino while I'm still waiting under OmniWeb at the moment I post this message.)
http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/4006/picture1ll6.th.png (http://img92.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture1ll6.png)

I tried with this pages together only.
http://www.tvtv.fr/cgi-bin/WebObjects/EPGfr.woa
http://forums.omnigroup.com/forumdisplay.php?f=8

[Forrest]

Is it actually using 141MB or does it have 141MB? (Or are you using a tool which lets you see the difference?) I've had OW have over 1GB allocated to it before. Not a big issue.

[m-rick]

Is it actually using 141MB or does it have 141MB? (Or are you using a tool which lets you see the difference?) I've had OW have over 1GB allocated to it before. Not a big issue.
No it's not actually, but in comparaison on the same pages it can increase till 141 Mb, i use the Activity Monitor.