100% CPU usage in Tor Browser?

Jake and Aaron both report occasional 100% CPU usage in Tor Browser, even with Javascript disabled. I've seen the thing randomly use a lot of CPU, but it usually calms down for me after I close the offending tab..

If we can figure out how to reproduce this, we can perhaps start by bisecting either our patches, or addons?

added component::applications/tor browser owner::tbb-team priority::high severity::normal status::new tbb-firefox-patch type::defect labels

Trac:
Cc: ioerror, aagbsn to ioerror, aagbsn, g.koppen@jondos.de

I have the same problem on Debian testing. It started with Firefox 17 ESR. For me, there doesn't seem to be an offending tab. After running TBB for a while and it starts using 100%, I can close all tabs except a blank one and the CPU load continues.

I'll see if I can avoid this by selectively disabling plugins.

Trac:
Cc: ioerror, aagbsn, g.koppen@jondos.de to ioerror, aagbsn, g.koppen@jondos.de, phw

Does this still happen with the 3.0 alpha series?

Trac:
Status: new to needs_information

Replying to mikeperry:

Does this still happen with the 3.0 alpha series?

Yes, at least with the 32-bit Linux build.

Trac:
Username: tor_que
Status: needs_information to new

Replying to mikeperry:

Does this still happen with the 3.0 alpha series?

The alpha series (64-bit) fixed this for me.

Replying to phw:

Replying to mikeperry:

Does this still happen with the 3.0 alpha series?

The alpha series (64-bit) fixed this for me.

Correction: It doesn't seem to be fixed for me. Also, this might be related to #9659 (moved).

it's #9901 (closed)

Trac:
Keywords: N/A deleted, tbb-firefox-patch added

Trac:
Component: Firefox Patch Issues to Tor Browser
Owner: mikeperry to tbb-team

Trac:
Username: OmegaPhil
Cc: ioerror, aagbsn, g.koppen@jondos.de, phw to ioerror, aagbsn, g.koppen@jondos.de, phw, OmegaPhil@startmail.com

At the yearly cleanig of the garage found an old box which was used at the office for accounting purposes, decided to blow the dust away and give it a use... Found out it won't work with Tor Browser, becasue of the CPU.

Tor Browser 3.6.5 is eating 100% CPU, after few hours of either usage either staying idle (in order to keep socksport open for other torified applications). The configration of the computer is this. An old box, running: Operating system: Debian Wheezy i386 arhitecture CPU is AMD Athlon 2800+ @ 2.083 Ghz, 512KB cache RAM: 1 GB Data width: 32bit system

Continiously monitoring with htop, Tor Browser starts just fine and uses about 18% to 22% CPU. If visiting javascript websites which require the computer some work to do, CPU usage grows accordingly but it does not freeze the computer and gets back to normal value when closing the respective tab. This is for the first 2 or 3 hours.

After some time (2-3 hours) regardless if there are any tabs open or not Tor browser starts to eat 100% CPU until you can't do anything, have to hard reboot. The process name showing 100% in htop is called firefox (from tor browser) and it is shown in 2 instances, one eating 68% and another one with 21 - 25% something like this.

Replying to s7r:

Operating system: Debian Wheezy i386 arhitecture CPU is AMD Athlon 2800+ @ 2.083 Ghz, 512KB cache RAM: 1 GB Data width: 32bit system

What desktop environment?

Replying to s7r:

after few hours of either usage either staying idle

What about system suspend while browser used?

Desktop environmenet is LXDE with filemanager PCMANFM 1.1 After it reaches the 100% CPU usage, computer becomes inoperative. Can't suspend/logout Can't access anything nor open terminal nor type anything. Hard reboot is the only solution.

What memory usage reported for firefox on hang? What video card? What drivers, proprietary?

Replying to s7r:

At the yearly cleanig of the garage found an old box which was used at the office for accounting purposes, decided to blow the dust away and give it a use... Found out it won't work with Tor Browser, becasue of the CPU.

Tor Browser 3.6.5 is eating 100% CPU, after few hours of either usage either staying idle (in order to keep socksport open for other torified applications).

Can you try an experiment? Use about:config to toggle extensions.torbutton.versioncheck_enabled to false. We'd like to know if doing this eliminates the hang.

Replying to cypherpunks:

Replying to s7r:

At the yearly cleanig of the garage found an old box which was used at the office for accounting purposes, decided to blow the dust away and give it a use... Found out it won't work with Tor Browser, becasue of the CPU.

Tor Browser 3.6.5 is eating 100% CPU, after few hours of either usage either staying idle (in order to keep socksport open for other torified applications).

Can you try an experiment? Use about:config to toggle extensions.torbutton.versioncheck_enabled to false. We'd like to know if doing this eliminates the hang.

This seems to have worked for me.

Trac:
Username: douggard
Status: new to closed
Resolution: N/A to worksforme

The previous poster (although 4 years ago) shouldn't have closed the ticket with new status worksforme. With all due respect, unless I missed something (search site:torproject.org "douggard"), I don't think douggard is a developer who should close tickets that way. Looks like a mistake.

toggle extensions.torbutton.versioncheck_enabled to false is a workaround but not a bugfix for this ticket.

This issue as described in the original ticket is still happening. Therefore reopening.

Could it be related to 10 years Firefox upstream unfixed bug High CPU on Linux even when in the background, possibly due to frequent polling?

Trac:
Reviewer: N/A to N/A
Resolution: worksforme to N/A
Sponsor: N/A to N/A
Status: closed to reopened

for me in windows too like this with tor browser 8.5.5

Trac:
Username: Anonymous75

See this thread as well: https://forums.whonix.org/t/torbrowser-8-0-high-cpu-usage-while-idle-in-whonix/5875/

I'm having high cpu usage with version 9.0.1 only when using a profile with torlauncher.prompt_at_startup and start_tor set to false, to access clearnet or other proxies. Tried setting versioncheck_enabled to false, it helped once, but maybe I've changed something else too. Since ever then, I can't figure out what setting helped, as I can't fix the other profiles. I've figured out the below 2 threads are the hoggers: -firefox.exe!Ordinal0+0x11x0 -ucrtbase.DLL!o__Clpow+0x10

Hope it helps.

Trac:
Username: speedtester

Setting extensions.torlauncher.control_host to "" and extensions.torlauncher.control_port to "0" solved the problem.

Trac:
Username: speedtester

This happens to me quiet often with a Whonix setup.

Trac:
Status: reopened to new

i did not have any problem in 8.x. issue appeared for me in 9.x when running a control port at 9150 (i.e. from another tbb profile) and using another tbb profile with extensions.torlauncher.start_tor=false. problem lies somewhere in tor-circuit-display.js/tor-control-port.js when trying to communicate with a control port it has no access to

extensions.torbutton.display_circuit=false as workaround

hope this is useful gk

Replying to cypherpunks:

i did not have any problem in 8.x. issue appeared for me in 9.x when running a control port at 9150 (i.e. from another tbb profile) and using another tbb profile with extensions.torlauncher.start_tor=false. problem lies somewhere in tor-circuit-display.js/tor-control-port.js when trying to communicate with a control port it has no access to

extensions.torbutton.display_circuit=false as workaround

hope this is useful gk

Is this the same as #32950 (moved)?

Trac:
Severity: N/A to Blocker

Trac:
Severity: Blocker to Normal

looks like someone made a new bug from my post, but not me so i can't say. they are describing my only high cpu occurrence (other than general ff low performance) in tbb 9 though

moved to tpo/applications/tor-browser#8560 (closed)