Phantomjs Memory Leak Issue

[entrptaher]

1. Which version of PhantomJS are you using? Tip: run phantomjs --version.
   2.1.1 (but it doesn't matter, it happens to any version of Phantomjs)

2. What steps will reproduce the problem?

   1. Use any testing suite, ie. CasperJS to do a Ajax call or any kind of Async steps.
   2. Give it command while it's still running the previous step.
   3. Bam, memory leak.

   
   

3. Which operating system are you using?
   I tried:

   • Ubuntu 12.04, 14.04, 16.04
   • Windows Xp, Windows 8.1
   • Digitalocean droplets (Ubuntu server 14.04 x64 image).

   All OS were both 32bit and 64 bit.

4. Did you use binary PhantomJS or did you compile it from source?
   I used Phantomjs from NPM, also built it, also tried older versions etc etc.

5. Please provide any additional information below.
   This is a general issue that has been talked over and over for past few years and yet no solution was provided.
   Where:

   • Memory Leak: Phantomjs 2 checked out on 13th November 2014 #12903
   • memory leak with WebPage class, multiple page loads #11390
   • PhantomJS runs out of memory with Karma and Mocha karma-runner/karma-phantomjs-launcher#55
   • PhantomJS 2.x memory leak when --load-images=false #13027
   • Memory Leak: Phantomjs 2 checked out on 13th November 2014 #12903
   • Memory leak even when using webpage.close() #12317
   • PhantomJS repeatedly crashes at 1037 tests due to memory leak on Windows angular/material#4734
   • and many more

6. This has been talked over and over, why did you open another issue?
   Well, did any of them solve the issue? Lets solve this issue once and for all.

7. What can we do?
   For example, just when the leak happens, find out what it was doing, in my example, Let it wait for reply after a Ajax call. The Ajax call can be async, but waiting for the reply should be sync, thus preventing another command to execute while the ajax call is still in process.

   In CasperJS, there is a method called waitFor which can do the following, and the memory doesn't leak, yet. It might leak in someone elses computer.

   casper.waitFor(function check() {
   data = this.evaluate(function() {
       return document.querySelectorAll('html').length > 0;
   });
   return data;
   }, function then() {
   this.capture('yoursitelist.png');
   });

Now, I wonder, what can be done to prevent the memory leak.

[byaka]

@entrptaher, great work!
Hope this bug will be fixed in future...

[entrptaher]

In the webserver module, if the concurrent number of connections can be adjusted/limited to 1, then maybe all of the steps would be blocked by default.

[jwoertink]

I think I'm seeing a memory leak too. I'm using phantomjs version 2.1.1 on ubuntu 14.04. I open the browser, make the request, then close the browser, then find the PID that it was using and kill that, but the process never seems to go away. Within 30 minutes, I have over 100 phantomjs processes running.

This doesn't happen when running on OSX that I'm seeing.

[byaka]

@jwoertink this not look like mem-leak))
try to kill it with kill -9 [pid]

[liuyihan]

Also I'm seeing this issue, hope to be fixed in future…I'm using phantomjs version 2.1.1 on ubuntu 14.04. After I make 10000 request, the process hold almost 1GB memory which cannot be released.

[entrptaher]

So the development stopped at 2.1.1.
That's sad I guess.

[Xsmael]

I'm facing the same, problem! any hope that this issue will get solved ?

Thanks.

[vitallium]

Let's track this in #11390