Geocaching.com website memory leak

[+da Bush Man]

There has been an annoying memory leak on the geocaching.com website for more than 1 year.  It's only noticeable if you open web pages and leave them open for at least half a day or longer.  After that time, memory usage creeps up by 1-2 GB if you have a couple of pages open, even though you aren't accessing them.  It doesn't seem to matter if the browser is Chrome or Edge, but Chrome seems to leak a little more.  The worst offender is the page with the map view of nearby caches, but the page of personal geocache lists is also pretty bad.  There could be other pages too, but these are the ones I tend to leave open and come back to later.  Originally I had assumed it was embedded Google Maps that was the cause, but the lists page doesn't display a map, only a list of caches.

[+@rthur]

I am not a Groundspeak developer, but I checked with Chrome and Firefox and I cannot find any evidence of a memory leak.

 

 

Here are two ways to see memory usage of a specific tab :

• On Firefox, just type about:performance in the navigation bar.
• On Chrome, press Shift+Esc and then Right-click on the table header of the Task Manager and enable JavaScript memory.

 

Can you give us an url and how much memory it got after a fresh reloading, and after few hours?

 

Check also that you disabled any extension because many issues come from extensions and not webpages.

[+arisoft]

I have problems with some Google Adds that are inserted on the right panel. Looks like a Javascript problem. Large memory consumption and freezing the browser until I manage to remove the add from the page. The behaviour seems to be random.

[+barefootguru]

I’ve experienced this with Safari on macOS for years when viewing a cache.  This is the only site which will turn the browser to molasses if a page is left open for a day.

 

No extensions.

Edited October 23, 2020 by barefootguru

[+The Snowdog]

Hmmm. I leave geocaching.com tabs open for days and weeks at a time with no problem, on several computers. Chrome, no extensions, but an aggressive ad blocker. So this makes me think that it is one (or more) of the ads that is the culprit.

[+Viajero Perdido]

I don't allow ads (paying member, so why should I?), nor Google's evil trackers, also block cookiebot, and after seeing this thread, gave it a looksee myself, via about:performance in FF.  All systems normal. 

 

Then yesterday I noticed a cache-page acting sluggish (open maybe a few hours), and memory usage was massive! I know I'd viewed some log images on the page, but couldn't figure out a convincing cause.  Still a mystery. 

 

Edited October 26, 2020 by Viajero Perdido

[+funkymunkyzone]

I've been having this same issue with Firefox.  If left for a while it kills the browser to the point where I lose internet connection entirely and my whole PC grinds to a halt.  Just happened now because I had a couple of puzzle cache pages open for a few hours as I was trying to solve them... maybe something is trying to tell me not to bother!

[+ecanderson]

I find that there are several situations with Google maps that causes this on FF - untested on other browsers.  Use street view repeatedly and it will chew up a few hundred MB each time that is never returned to the pool.

 

[+Viajero Perdido]

On 10/25/2020 at 8:04 PM, Viajero Perdido said:

Then yesterday I noticed a cache-page acting sluggish (open maybe a few hours), and memory usage was massive! I know I'd viewed some log images on the page, but couldn't figure out a convincing cause.  Still a mystery. 

 

Another day, the very same cache page (https://coord.info/GC8QW1Y), same odd symptom with the same looked-at-a-few-images recipe.  Only this cache page.  It's so locked up right now, I couldn't even wake it up to grab the short link; I typed it manually instead.

 

I've looked at plenty of other cache pages in the meantime.  All good, with all but this one.

 

ETA: Running current Firefox on Linux Mint, NoScript blocking Google trackers, router blocking cookiebot plus much mal/adware on four blacklists. 

 

ETA after seeing following note: As with the earlier occasion, some time had passed after I'd lost interest in the page, and had gotten into other stuff in other tabs. 

 

Edited October 29, 2020 by Viajero Perdido

[+ecanderson]

OK. Having a look at 8QW1Y here.  Firefox 82.0 (64) on Win10.

I *do* have some ad blocking in place (lots of domains referred to 0.0.0.0 in hosts file)

Initial use for that page is 14.3MB.  Just sitting on that page, it remains at 14.3MB.

You talk about viewing images --

Viewed all 12 of the log images.

Memory use increased to 15MB.  No doubt images have been cached.  To check that...

Again viewed all 12 of the log images.

Memory use holding steady at 15MB.

 

Unable to replicate you problem with my configuration.

 

 

Edited October 29, 2020 by ecanderson

[+Viajero Perdido]

The leak is real, but hard to pin down with a repeatable recipe.  I'll keep trying.

 

Just spent a few minutes - that's all - on a cache page (different than above), scrolled a bit, looked at some images, voted a couple of logs "great story" (a Canada/Norway feature), then wandered off to other tabs.

 

5 or 10 minutes later, Firefox is dragging, and this cache page is up to almost 1GB in memory usage!

 

So of course, now that I'm watching it carefully, it's behaving.  (I reloaded the page.)

 

Edited November 3, 2020 by Viajero Perdido

[+Viajero Perdido]

I've got a simple page open; I think it was open all day, and now it's skyrocketing when I scroll.  It went from 2.3 GB to 2.84 GB in just a minute or so.  The whole browser is groaning.  Hit PgDn, PgUp, and I'm not sure if the browser will survive to let me post this.  It's my latest hide, only the publish log so far.  Now about:performance won't even report on the tab, and the frame rate for typing this complaint is about 3/sec.  Abort!  Please fix.

 

PS, killing the tab took a few minutes and a lot of page-file activity.

 

Edited December 8, 2020 by Viajero Perdido

[+arisoft]

I've noticed this behavior in Firefox starting this year. Suddenly, memory consumption increases until the browser stops. I traced the problem down into advertisements. Many times I have succeed to get control back by eliminating the ad banner manually. Blocking adds may help you to solve this problem.

[+Viajero Perdido]

3 hours ago, arisoft said:

Blocking adds may help you to solve this problem

 

Been there done that, thanks.  I block ad domains (in router) and Google tracker domains (in NoScript), so my cache pages are clean and ad-free.  On this page I hadn't viewed any photo popups from cache logs (none on that page), which eliminates those as a suspect.  But simple scrolling seems to gobble memory.  The final straw was a PgUp or PgDn, dead Jim.

 

Whatever it is, it seems to go exponential, and only seems to become noticeable - and dramatically so - after some hours.

[+Viajero Perdido]

Another page, left open all day.  In the last minute, it went from 38 to 100 to 200 MB (!) simply by me scrolling a bit, up-and-down with the scroll-wheel click for smooth scrolling, entirely within the (moderately long-winded) cache description, and pointedly above the logs area which are loaded dynamically.  (They were already fully loaded a while ago.)

 

Stand back, she's gonna blow!

 

275.

 

Yesterday I tried to diagnose this with the inspector, but trying to display a report (can't remember which) triggered a runaway page-file top-up, which I aborted just before the file filled (7GB of 8), and I aborted quickly, well as quickly as possible given the duress.  Not sure how Linux handles a full page file; no app has ever taken me that high...

 

PgDn, PgUp.  356.

 

Anything I should look for in the inspector?  This is incredibly repeatable.  (Or are you sick of hearing from me?)

 

363.  PgDn, PgUp.  450 MB.  Aborting.

 

Edited December 10, 2020 by Viajero Perdido

[+GeoChick Snail]

I was searching for an answer to my problem and came across this forum. After having several geocaching tabs open for a while, when I try to close then the entire computer freezes. I have to push the off button to reboot.  It’s very frustrating. Only happens with geocaching.com. 

[+the Seagnoid]

Hi everyone - something that might help to identify the problem - on the website right click and in the context menu select "inspect". Have a look at the network, performance and memory tabs (The OP reports a memory leak, but it may be a network issue, as in slow file delivery)