[H-GEN] Speeding up Firefox

[Simon Ellis]

  Hi Russell.

There is a cleanup utility called BleachBit. It is available in the 
repositories of several Distros as well as on sourceforge.

http://bleachbit.sourceforge.net/

I'm not sure if it is exactly the same but there is a "vacuum" option in 
the Firefox section.


Regards,
Simon Ellis.


On 19/08/2010 11:41 AM, Russell Stuart wrote:
> [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
> [ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]
>
> I discovered something the other day that I found both surprising and
> useful.
>
> When I first installed Firefox it had a nice&  fast auto-completion
> feature for the address bar, forms an other things.  But as time went on
> it changed from nice and fast to slow but still useful, and then to just
> plain obnoxious as I drummed my fingers waiting for the HDD light to
> switch off while it did auto the complete.
>
> Firefox implements those features by using sqlite3 as a backend.  I
> guessed the cause was those sqlite3 databases were growing in size.
> Looking at the databases my firefox use suggests that might be the case:
>
>          -rw-r--r-- 1 rstuart it 2.0K Aug 19 10:29 search.sqlite
>          -rw-r--r-- 1 rstuart it 2.0K Aug 19 10:29 permissions.sqlite
>          -rw-r--r-- 1 rstuart it  18K Aug 19 10:29 content-prefs.sqlite
>          -rw-r--r-- 1 rstuart it  23K Aug 19 10:29 webappsstore.sqlite
>          -rw-r--r-- 1 rstuart it 268K Aug 19 10:29 downloads.sqlite
>          -rw-r--r-- 1 rstuart it 303K Aug 19 10:29 signons.sqlite
>          -rw-r--r-- 1 rstuart it 403K Aug 19 10:29 cookies.sqlite
>          -rw-r--r-- 1 rstuart it 2.2M Aug 19 10:29 formhistory.sqlite
>          -rw-r--r-- 1 rstuart it  20M Aug 19 10:31 urlclassifier3.sqlite
>          -rw-r--r-- 1 rstuart it  24M Aug 19 10:29 places.sqlite
>
> It seemed reasonable that searching a 24M as I type might unavoidably
> take a while.
>
> Turns out it isn't so.  The reason sqlite3 was taking a while to search
> those databases wasn't because they are particularly big.  It is because
> they had became fragmented over time.
>
> It isn't difficult to unfragment them.  One way is ensure firefox isn't
> running, then run these commands:
>
>    $ cd ~/.mozilla/firefox/SOMEJUNK.default
>    $ for f in *.sqlite; do sqlite3 $f 'VACUUM;'; done
>
> A second way is to get firefox to run those commands for you.  Doing
> this worked for me, but it seems a lot of people have problems with it.
> Also it only cleans up the navigation databases, whereas the previous
> method cleans up all of them.
>
>    1.  From Firefox's menu, go to Tools, Error Console.
>
>    2.  In the "Code" field enter this string:
>
>        Components.classes["@mozilla.org/browser/nav-history-service;1"].getService(Components.interfaces.nsPIPlacesDatabase).DBConnection.executeSimpleSQL("VACUUM");
>
>    3.  Click the "Evaluate" button.  If it worked the UI will freeze for
>        a while.
>
> A third way is to install a Firefox plugin that will do it for you.
> Again, most of these only clean up the navigation databases, but on the
> up side some will automatically do it periodically for you.  You can
> find them by entering "vacuum" into the search for add-ons box:
>
>    https://addons.mozilla.org/
>
> Assuming you have plenty of free disk space (so your disk isn't
> fragmented) doing any of these things should make URL entry into firefox
> roughly as fast as the day you installed it.  Of course, if you think
> firefox ran like a dog on the day you installed it then this isn't going
> to help.
>
>
>
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