Firefox 34 is very slow when Zotero plug-in is enabled

stevejoslyn
I have my Zotero Library on an external thunderbolt HD. My firefox is extremely slow, as it appears to be trying to access or clock over the hard drive (continually hear it clocking over). However, when I disable zotero, firefox runs smoothly with no access attempts to external HD.

I thought upgrading to Yosemite would fix this. No success

I think it all started when I upgraded to Firefox 34.
  • dstillman
    Can you provide a Debug ID for a period of slowness?
  • stevejoslyn
    Thanks for looking at this Dan.

    Debug ID D1352378511

    I tried to recreate it. I loaded up zotero plugin then collapsed it. Then went to youtube and the external HD was clocking over repeatedly. And slowing/stalling the videos (not audio). Really confused, but hopefully you can see why.
  • dstillman
    From the debug output, it looks like it's just indexing synced full-text content, which it does in the background after a few seconds of the computer being idle. It should stop if you start using it again, though there might be a short delay if it's indexing a larger document at the time (or if the hard drive is particularly slow). If you just leave it idle for a while it should finish.
  • stevejoslyn
    Hi Dan,
    I have zotero window open in firefox and it is causing continuous serious issues with clocking over the HD and putting spinning rainbow cursor up when it is thinking. It has been non-stop since I opened zotero 10 minutes ago.
    Here is the Debug ID after the latest
    D1525367418

    Note that I can't even type continuously on the screen (and this is a new mac pro super fast computer).
  • stevejoslyn
    Hey Dan.
    It's getting unbearable. I cannot use firefox at all. Disable Zotero, problem soved.
    Really confused at why it keeps testing/accessing the exernal hard drive but when it does, Firefox completely freezes.
  • dstillman
    This really should be as simple as leaving Firefox running while the computer is idle for a little while. In that debug output, it processed 158 additional files, and stopped 9 times when the computer was being used. Currently the delay before indexing kicks in is only 5 seconds, which is pretty short and should probably be increased, but it's also supposed to stop as soon as you start doing anything (e.g., moving the mouse). I suspect something about the external drive is causing this to have more of an effect on the system than an internal drive (though I'm not sure why, if it's connected via Thunderbolt), but it really should finish if you just let it go.
  • dstillman
    (For what it's worth, though, the next major version of Zotero should also be much more responsive (and allow Firefox to be) when it's doing things in the background.)
  • stevejoslyn
    Thank you Dan.
    I will open up the zotero window and leave it for the morning to sort itself out. Hopefully that will sort it.
  • physik-floh
    I stumbled across this thread while searching the internet for my speed problems with Firefox 34, and Steve nailed it with the Zotero plugin being the culprit. I have a fairly beefy laptop, and my i7 CPU will show one core maxed out for roughly 20 seconds, but only when doing the following (I haven't noticed it in any other combination):

    - Firefox 34 (on Mac OS X 10.9.5 Mavericks, but that doesn't matter)
    - Zotero plugin running
    - After loading or reloading any page from the PHP-heavy "mousehuntgame.com"

    This does not occur with the Zotero plugin turned off, it didn't occur on Firefox 33, and I haven't noticed it on other websites (although I am sure they are out there). I definitely had Firefox running without activity for many hours since this started, and I do not have an external drive attached, so the suggested solution does not work for me. I also did not expect it to, since the problem only shows up on one particular website, Firefox seems fine everywhere else.

    Maybe this will help in pointing out the problem. Let me know if you need more info.
  • aurimas
    PHP would have nothing to do with Zotero or slow performance in Firefox (since PHP is entirely sever-side). We'd need a URL for a page that is slow.
  • physik-floh
    As I wrote, it is on "https://www.mousehuntgame.com". I fear you will have to make an account on the site and log in to get to the problematic parts. This is honestly not spam, I will even make an account for you if you don't want to. Sorry, I did not find an openly accessible site to reproduce the problem.
  • aurimas
    Even so, what page exactly?
  • physik-floh
    Ah, okay. Sorry. This is on basically every single page of the game. The starting page for example is "https://www.mousehuntgame.com/index.php". I just realized that you'll have to connect to a Facebook account for the site, and I really don't want anybody to have to do that.

    So here is an inactive account you can use. I will change the password tomorrow evening, but it should work fine for testing purposes now.

    User: ellalouis
    Pass: testaccount
  • aurimas
    Let's start a new thread for this. I don't see the issue you're reporting, but I'm also on Windows. You can try generating a Zotero debug log Starting with loading the page and covering several seconds of high CPU activity though if Zotero is the culprit it should be frozen and you might have to resort to real-time debugging
  • physik-floh
    First of all: Thanks for the quick help!

    And second: I am completely baffled. Right now, I am also not able to reproduce the problem. I had the Zotero plugin disabled for the last 12 hours or so, and now I reenabled it to record the problem. And it is gone.

    I am very sorry. Usually I experience such behaviour from the other side (being a programmer, only for physics simulation software and not for real-world usable things...). I thought I had tried everything with rebooting the browser, disabling all other plugins and extensions and only then be certain that it is the Zotero-Firefox34-interplay. But now it is gone.

    But, now that I have made an account for this forum, I can assure you that as soon as the problem resurfaces, I will create a debug log and open a new thread. :)

    Thanks again for the fast replies.
  • fbennett
    (This may be unrelated, but during some testing today I found that Firefox was extremely sluggish on some restarts from installing a plugin. The condition seemed to be triggered by clicking on tabs before the restart had fully completed. In my case, the issue vanished after closing and restarting Firefox, and waiting for it to settle before beginning tab navigation.)
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