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List:       ubuntu-devel-discuss
Subject:    Firefox profiles on a tmpfs (ramdisk)?
From:       chrisccoulson () ubuntu ! com (Chris Coulson)
Date:       2010-10-26 20:55:56
Message-ID: 1288126556.9828.9.camel () chris-laptop
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On Mon, 2010-10-25 at 17:56 -0400, Micah Gersten wrote:
> On 10/24/2010 10:12 AM, Jouko Orava wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > For a couple of years now I've kept my active Firefox profiles on a tmpfs
> > (mounted size=128M,mode=01777,atime,auto,rw,nodev,noexec,nosuid)
> > on both my desktop workstation and on my minilaptop. It feels subjectively
> > much snappier, but I haven't actually measured the difference.
> > On the laptop, it also reduces disk usage, which is very nice.
> > 
> > The profiles are unpacked from a tarball when firefox starts, and tarred
> > back when firefox closes, using two script hooks in run-mozilla.sh:
> > 	[ -x /usr/lib/firefox-profiles.sh ] && /usr/lib/firefox-profiles.sh load
> > just before the final if clause, and
> > 	[ -x /usr/lib/firefox-profiles.sh ] && /usr/lib/firefox-profiles.sh save
> > just after the final if clause.
> > 
> > The script itself is very careful to not fail (and not to overwrite the
> > old tarball unless the new one is ok), and has never failed yet,
> > even when Firefox crashes.
> > 
> > I tried to get something similar upstream earlier:
> > 	https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=576707
> > but it was rejected for complexity reasons.
> > 
> > If the Ubuntu Mozilla team were to add the script hook into Firefox
> > -- noting that it does not change the behaviour by default, only if the
> > hooked script actually exists --, I could create an Ubuntu package,
> > which when installed creates the necessary tmpfs, profile tarballs,
> > and modifications to the profile configs to limit the profile size
> > (so that the tmpfs does not grow too large).
> > All of the changes are also safely undoable if the package is removed.
> > Each user can also choose which profiles, if any, are kept on the tmpfs.
> > 
> > The question is, are Ubuntu developers interested in this?
> > 
> > It does add changes to Firefox run-mozilla.sh script, which has to be
> > maintained. (However, run-mozilla.sh does not seem to change often.)
> > 
> > If there is interest for this, I could upload or e-mail the scripts
> > (/usr/lib/firefox-profiles.sh for Firefox, and proposed maintainer
> > scripts for a package setting up the tmpfs and moving Firefox
> > profiles to a tmpfs.)
> > 
> > (There are also some user interface related issues to think about, too.
> > For example, should the package move all profiles to tmpfs by default,
> > or should it have a GUI prompting the user on the next Firefox startup?
> > Is there need for a migration tool, GUI or commandline, so that users
> > could choose afterwards?)
> > 
> > At the minimum, adding the script hook into run-mozilla.sh makes
> > the testing much easier. Now, I need to modify run-mozilla.sh whenever
> > Firefox is updated, which is a bit of a chore..
> > 
> > I'd be very happy to provide further information for those interested.
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > 	Jouko Orava
> > 
> 
> If upstream rejected for complexity, we won't be able to take it
> either.  We will be discussing increasing the time between session saves
> in Firefox though.
> 
> Thanks,
> Micah Gersten
> Ubuntu Mozilla Team
> 

We might stop using the upstream launcher scripts this cycle, as they
are quite slow (about 200ms on my system before actually starting
Firefox) and have a lot of complexity to cope with not knowing where
things are installed on the system. However, what is being proposed here
isn't something I want to support either, even with our own completely
custom start script.

Regards
Chris
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