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Anonymous
June 21, 2012
Question

Large Memory Usage in Flash Player 11.3.300.257

  • June 21, 2012
  • 11 replies
  • 108314 views

Jeromie Clark wrote:

Hi,


You should see two FlashPlayer_11_3_300_257.exe processes.  This is how Protected Mode in Firefox works.  It does *not* double memory usage. 

Having two FlashPlayerPlugin_11_3_300_257.exe processes may not double memory usage but your 'low-integrity heavy-lifter' process definitely has massive memory usage issues that need fixing.

As I type, this process is using 792MB of RAM all by itself.

Before the Flash update, Firefox's own 'plugin-container.exe' only ever used under 200MB at the very most  This is clearly unacceptable memory hogging by your new Flash process.

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      11 replies

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      jeromiec83223024
      jeromiec83223024
      Inspiring
      June 21, 2012

      As the issue you're describing is distinct from the problem in the previous discussion, I've branched this into a new discussion so we can discuss it in more detail.

      Flash Player will use a percentage of your available memory.  It also has a garbage collection system that kicks in periodically, and we should not make your system crash or swap to disk excessively.

      If you've seen a significant increase in memory usage on a particular site between Flash Player 11.2 and Flash Player 11.3, or memory usage that grows indefinitely, that may be indiciative of a problem and we'd definitely want to investigate.

      If you can point us to specific links that demonstrate this issue, we'd be happy to take a look.

      Thanks!

      S
      SwoozyQue
      Participating Frequently
      July 4, 2012

      I play games on Facebook using Firefox.

      When you start FF there are no Flash processes running. If you play a game on Facebook there are now 3 Flash processes running where there used to only 1.

      Also with the Flash 11.2 plug in when you closed the game you were playing on FB the plug in process would close. Now when you close the game with the 11.3 plugin all 3 process continue running.

      If you want specific  examples, I see it playing Treasure Island and Hidden Chronicles.

      jeromiec83223024
      jeromiec83223024
      Inspiring
      July 9, 2012

      Yes, memory useage does release when the game is closed.

      I guess the point at least I'm trying to make is why on 11.3.300.262 plugin do we now have 3 processes running for Flash when there used to be 3? And why aren't these process closing when the game is closed, as they used to in 11.2?


      There are two FlashPlayer_*.exe processes under normal circumstances.  One is a thin broker layer, and the other is the low-privilege process that actually renders the Flash content.  They *should* close after you exit Firefox.  If you're curious about the details on the implementation and the reasoning behind it, this is a great resource: http://blogs.adobe.com/asset/2012/06/inside-flash-player-protected-mode-for-firefox.html

      I have observed that in some situatons, you can get into a state where the browser has exited, but we don't shut down.   I've seen that sometimes firefox.exe exits, but plugin-container.exe and FlashPlayer_*.exe are hanging out -- sometimes it's just one or both FlashPlayer_*.exe processes.  Those failure states are probably distinct problems, but the net result is that it's possible to get into a state where we have an orphaned process hanging out. 

      One you re-launch the browser, we spin up a new broker and player process, so you see the active ones and the orphaned one.  You should only ever see the two processes under normal operation.

      I don't have a consistent set of reproduction steps for this problem.  If anyone does, I'd definitely like to hear about them.

      I've filed the following bug to see if we can implement some proactive mitigations for this in the short-term:

      https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3265588 -  FlashPlayer_*.exe Processes can be orphaned after Firefox.exe process exits

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