Re: firefox eats threads

[Tobias Nygren <tnn%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

On Wed, 18 Mar 2015 14:26:04 +0100
Thomas Klausner <wiz%NetBSD.org@localhost> wrote:

> Over the last months I have noticed a pattern. When I leave a firefox
> process running for some time, it reduces the available threads for
> other programs. The symptom is that other programs (like git, gnucash,
> or anything that needs threads) don't start or have weird failure
> modes.
> 
> When I quit and restart firefox, there are immediately enough threads
> available again. So I'm sure it's firefox-related.
> 
> Last night I noticed that this even happens when I'm not actively
> doing anything in it (so perhaps extensions or firefox sync also have
> an influence).
> 
> Did anyone else notice this?
> 
> Any ideas how to fix this?

Firefox names all it's threads by type with pthread_setname_np(3).
The following command is useful to find out what kind of threads are in
use:

$ ps -sp 12501 -O lname

Firefox after startup pools 45 threads so that's one third of your
available LWPs. My opinion is that the default ulimits on amd64 have not
caught up with the times. 1024 would be a more reasonable figure than
128 & 160 for open files and lwps.

Kind regards,
-Tobias