Computer freezes while saving with Firefox / Timimi

[Mal]

Is anyone else having problems with saving using Timimi with Firefox?

I am getting slow saves and the computer freezing (no response from mouse or keyboard) for about 20 seconds or so on each save.  This is with relatively large tiddlywiki files (about 20-30 MB).  I am running Firefox version 70.0.1 on Ubuntu and MacOS and Timimi version 2.03.  There are no problems when using TiddlyServer.

It seems that this problem has appeared after the latest Firefox update.

Mal

[Birthe C]

Hi Mal

I am using Firefox 70.0.1 on Linux Mint and Timimi version 2.03 also and having no problems. BUT my Tiddlywiki is not by far as big as yours.

Birthe

[TonyM]

A Quick test with Windows 10, SSD drive, 16GB ram, FF 70.0.1, Timimi 2.0.2 is working for me on an 11MB tiddlywiki file.

However since I use tiddlywiki with firefox (and Chrome) more than anything on my computer, I have lifted the available ram to both browsers. Given I have 16GB RAM I could afford to lift the maximum use of RAM by the browsers. Non tiddlywiki users may want to limit the amount of total ram their browser will use to protect other apps. The prolific user of tiddlywiki, and large tiddlywikis may want to let their browsers use more of the overall resources.

I am not talking about cache here but perhaps you could give over more anyway.

I can't find the instructions in my notes but the problem is most content on the internet is about reducing browser memory use, when this is a case for increasing its upper limits if you have the ram onboard to support it or if you were using a device primarily for browsing. Searching for "Increase RAM" usually results in advice to decrease its use or increase cache, so this is extremely frustrating.

I will let you know if I locate the instructions.

Anyone else know?

Tony

[Mal]

Birthe / Tony,

Your replies prompted me to investigate a bit further into this problem.

I took a tiddlywiki with a size of about 33MB and progressively deleted image tiddlers and saved after each bulk deletion.  When the wiki was at about 27MB it still caused the computer to freeze.  However, when it got down to 26MB it saved normally.

So, clearly, there is a limit to the file size for saving with Timimi and Firefox!  In fact, on one occasion, Firefox actually crashed completely and had to be restarted.

These tests were carried out on my Ubuntu laptop and I have not yet tried this on the Macbook.

It will be interesting to see if the threshold varies with OS type, RAM size, etc.

I have not yet figured out how to change the Firefox RAM allocation, so can't comment an whether this has any effect.

Thanks for your input on this.

Regards,

Mal

[Ton Gerner]

Hi Mal,

Up till now I am using Mario's File backups.
Today I gave Timimi a try.
Seen your problems I tested it with my biggest TW of 38.5MB.
I can edit and save this TW without problems (saving takes about 1 - 2s).

My conditions:

16GB RAM
Linux Mint 19.2
Firefox 70.0.1 (~45 tabs open)
Timimi 2.03

Cheers,

Ton

[Mal]

Ton,

Thanks for your input.

My machine is running with 8GB RAM, so this points to RAM capacity as the issue here.

When I get a chance, I will experiment with the Macbook to see how it responds to different wiki sizes.

Regards,

Mal.

[TonyM]

I was having a problem just now. I removed the add on and installed it back (Minor version update) and it started working

Timimi 2.0.3, Windows 10, Firefox 0.0.1 (64-bit)

I also updated the local computer https://github.com/ibnishak/Timimi/releases

Regards

Tony

On Saturday, November 16, 2019 at 3:47:26 PM UTC+11, Mal wrote:

[TonyM]

Note re enter the Backups folder

[Mal]

Tony,

I just reinstalled Timimi and it still chokes on my large wiki.

I note that the add-in is version 2.0.3 while the downloaded installation file is version 2.0.2 - not sure if this is a problem.

I'm not using the backup functionality.

Regards,

Mal

[TonyM]

Mal,

I am using the same version of firefox as you. With no problems after this update

Perhaps you could get an earlier version of firefox from portableapps.com or somewhere and see if the problem is there. Do test an empty file because it will say if the mechanism is working and the size is a problem. If it works try importing your old wiki data (tiddlers only) first into the empty.

Best of luck

Tony

[Mal]

Tony,

I'm running linux, so portableapps is not really an option, so instead, I installed Firefox 68.2.0esr (64-bit) from a snap package.  This allows me to have both versions installed and able to run simultaneously.  With the esr version, a 34MB wiki saves without problems in a few seconds.  This supports the theory that the problem is with a recent Firefox update.

Note, also that I see the same symptoms with a number of large tiddlywiki files, so it is not an issue with one particular wiki.

I think I will raise an issue on the Timimi Github site for the information of other users and for Riz if he is able to put any thought into this.

Regards,

Mal

Edit: See https://github.com/ibnishak/Timimi/issues/33

[TonyM]

Mal,

Thanks for the update. Best of luck.In the meantime if you want to ignore the browser altogether consider TiddlyWiki Desktop https://tiddlywiki.com/static/TiddlyDesktop.html

It can be installed on Windows, Mac OS X or Linux. It is compatible with TiddlyWiki version 5 and the older TiddlyWikiClassic. 

Or experiment with Jed's new Bob.exe file saver plugin which uses another mechanism to Timimi.

Regards

Tony

[Mal]

Tony,

I'm currently getting around this problem by using Tiddlyserver for large wikis.

Also, I've found that the latest beta build of Firefox (71.0b12.1) seems to be working fine for saving large wikis, so it looks like the problem might have already been fixed by the FF developers.

This highlights a big advantage of Ubuntu snap packages - I now have 3 different versions of Firefox running concurrently on my laptop - great for testing.

Regards,

Mal