Bug#640331: /usr/lib/xulrunner-1.9.1/xulrunner-stub: Memory leak in xulrunner-stub (Was: iceweasel 6.0 - huge ram use)

[Jacob Sparre Andersen]

Package: xulrunner-1.9.1
Version: 1.9.1.16-11
Followup-For: Bug #640331

Dear Maintainer,

I've made a simple test of Iceweasel, since I suspected it has a memory leak:

 1) Restarted iceweasel.

 2) Restored a session such that two tabs were open:

     a) a "restore session" tab
     b) http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2076798

 3) Registered the memory use of "xulrunner-stub" using top:

Thu Dec 29 06:12:47 2011:

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND           
13138 sparre    20   0  296m  68m  26m S  0.0 14.0   0:11.73 xulrunner-stub

 4) Left Iceweasel (almost on it own) for a few hours.  (In reality I have had
    3 different pages open in a 3rd tab.)

 5) Registered the memory use of "xulrunner-stub" using top once again:

Thu Dec 29 09:28:58 2011:

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND           
13138 sparre    20   0  317m  59m  15m S  0.3 12.1   2:43.90 xulrunner-stub

 6) This indicates that Iceweasel (xulrunner-stub) leaks memory at a rate of
    about 8.4 Mb/hour.  Since I prefer to leave my browser running for weeks
    at a time, this is not really acceptable.  And even if it was, it
    indicates a programming error, which might be used for an attack against
    my system.
    
Kind regards,

Jacob Sparre Andersen

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (700, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.1.0-1-486
Locale: LANG=fo_FO.ISO-8859-1, LC_CTYPE=fo_FO.ISO-8859-1 (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages xulrunner-1.9.1 depends on:
ii  libasound2                1.0.24.1-4             
ii  libatk1.0-0               2.2.0-2                
ii  libbz2-1.0                1.0.5-7                
ii  libc6                     2.13-21                
ii  libcairo2                 1.10.2-6.1             
ii  libdbus-1-3               1.4.16-1               
ii  libfontconfig1            2.8.0-3                
ii  libfreetype6              2.4.8-1                
ii  libgcc1                   1:4.6.2-4              
ii  libglib2.0-0              2.30.2-4               
ii  libgtk2.0-0               2.24.8-2               
ii  libhunspell-1.2-0         1.2.14-4               
ii  libjpeg62                 6b1-2                  
ii  libmozjs2d                1.9.1.16-11            
ii  libnspr4-0d               4.8.9-1                
ii  libnss3-1d                3.13.1.with.ckbi.1.88-1
ii  libpango1.0-0             1.29.4-2               
ii  libpng12-0                1.2.46-3               
ii  libreadline6              6.2-7                  
ii  libsqlite3-0              3.7.9-2                
ii  libstartup-notification0  0.12-1                 
ii  libstdc++6                4.6.2-4                
ii  libx11-6                  2:1.4.4-4              
ii  libxrender1               1:0.9.6-2              
ii  libxt6                    1:1.1.1-2              
ii  zlib1g                    1:1.2.3.4.dfsg-3       

xulrunner-1.9.1 recommends no packages.

Versions of packages xulrunner-1.9.1 suggests:
ii  libcanberra0      0.28-3    
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2  0.98-1    
ii  libgconf2-4       2.32.4-1  
ii  libgnome2-0       2.32.1-2  
ii  libgnomeui-0      2.24.5-2  
ii  libgnomevfs2-0    1:2.24.4-1

-- no debconf information