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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