[Bug 137764] Firefox caches pixmaps to X11, need feature to disable

[Jim Kronebusch]

Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: firefox

Firefox caches pixmaps to X11.  On a full workstation with plenty of RAM
and tons of hard drive space, this probably wouldn't be seen as a bug.
But when running thin clients or any type of diskless workstation this
is a HUGE problem.  For an example of what happens and to provide
repeatability for testing here is some information.

Install Edubuntu 7.04.  Boot a thin client.  Install xrestop on the
server.  Log into client and open xrestop in a terminal.  Then open
Firefox while leaving xrestop visable.  Browse standard less graphic
intense websites and watch the cache usage as displayed by
xrestop....not bad.  Now hit this webpage:

http://www.carteretcountyschools.org/bms/teacherwebs/sdavenport/artgallery6.htm

You will see the X cache climb drastically until Firefox completely
consumes all available RAM and Swap space at which point the client
completely freezes and needs to be hard rebooted.

Now the example site above is a certain exaggeration of the problem.
But it is a site that will certainly crash about every thin client
system you try it on.  As a workaround one can add massive amounts of
RAM to the thin client (512MB+) or increase nbdswap to a very high
amount (1GB+).  However if a user hits the right site, the terminal will
still crash.  If a browser such as Opera or Konquerer are used and
monitored with xrestop, you can hit the same site above and see very
little increase, and a client with 128MB RAM and 32MB swap will run
perfectly.

This is a bug that has apparently plagued mozilla based browsers for
years and has not yet been resolved.  Please remove this "feature" or at
least provide a way to disable pixmap caching to X from within
about:config such as "browser.cache.pixmap.enable user set boolean
false".  I have tried every other config option and none of them disable
the pixmap caching.

Thanks,
Jim Kronebusch

** Affects: firefox (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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Firefox caches pixmaps to X11, need feature to disable
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/137764
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