On Saturday, 16 May 2020 13:32:32 BST Dale wrote:
> Dale wrote:
> > I guess the bug was caught and fixed.  Thanks to all that read and
> > Michael for trying to help. 
> > 
> > Dale
> > 
> > :-)  :-) 
> 
> I have some more info and some doesn't make much sense.  I thought this
> might be fixed but guess not.  While it is somewhat slower to take up a
> lot of memory after a recent plasma update, it does still get there.  It
> takes a day or so now where before it was just a few hours.  Logging out
> and back in does reset it to normal tho. 
> 
> One thing that seems to stand out, Firefox and one profile in
> particular.  I have two profiles that I use a lot nowadays.  One is for
> ebay, Amazon, tracking shipments etc etc.  The other is where I do
> youtube and other video type sites.  It has a video download helper
> add-on installed but the rest is mostly the same.  When I have the first
> profile open, it is slow to consume memory.  When I open the one I use
> for videos, it starts building up faster.  While I can logout and back
> in daily, it still gets to around 5% or so.  I usually start planning to
> logout and back in when it hits 4% or so.  It's at 5 by the time I get
> everything to where I can.  Thing is, closing Firefox doesn't seem to
> have any effect on it.  It slows down some but doesn't get back to
> normal memory usage.  I can't quite figure out how Firefox can have a
> effect on it tho.  I realize it is running within the GUI and all but
> still, it doesn't make much sense. 
> 
> I do a emerge -e system and world the other day in my chroot.  Once
> done, I did a complete re-emerge on my running system.  All was done
> with the same gcc, 9.3.  I'm not sure it did any good but at least it
> rules out some sort of mismatch with different packages running with
> different gcc versions.  It also rules out and sort of broken linkages
> and other mismatches as well.  I've also updated kernels and video
> drivers with no change.  I also disabled my background slideshow to see
> if it was causing this, no change.  When I was doing my emerge system
> and world, I had Firefox and at times Seamonkey closed and it stayed
> within reason at least.  It would get up to around 2% but seemed to stay
> there.  I'm not sure what to look for or even for sure what is exactly
> the trigger for this problem.  It seems Firefox affects it but not sure
> why that is exactly. 
> 
> If anyone has ideas, I'm open to them.  I can't think of anything else
> to try at the moment. 
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-) 


Just an idea:

Log out/in, check memory usage is normal.  If not log out, restart /etc/
init.d/xdm and login again.  Start FF without any addons.  Use a new profile 
if necessary.  Check memory usage.  If after a while under normal use you 
still have reasonable levels of memory usage, then you can start adding one 
add-on at a time and see where that gets you.

You may also want to give youtube-dl a spin.  I know, it's not a FF-GUI video 
download tool, but it works without getting in the way or eating up RAM 
unnecessarily.