firefox disk IO

[Reid Rivenburgh]

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 4:45 PM, Wayne Feick <waf at brunz.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-01-04 at 15:45 -0700, Reid Rivenburgh wrote:
>> On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 3:32 PM, Wayne Feick <waf at brunz.org> wrote:
>> > I've been having a lot of problems with firefox periodically becoming
>> > unusable while it pounds away at my disk. It comes back after a while, but
>> > then does it again. I tried web searching and found some recommendations
>> > about turning off "Block reported attack sites" and "Block reported web
>> > forgeries" but that didn't help.
>> >
>> > Are others seeing this? Is there a solution?
>>
>> I have seen that in the past.  I'm not sure what improved things for
>> me; maybe the two block options you mentioned.  You may also want to
>> try cleaning up your database files, as described here:
>>
>> http://garmahis.com/tips/how-to-speed-up-firefox-by-cleaning-its-databases/
>>
>> Of course, it could also be related to an extension you're using....
>>
>> reid
>
> Thanks for the pointer, it was helpful. I gave it a try and got
>
>        % for i in *.sqlite; do echo $i; echo "VACUUM;" | sqlite3 $i; done
>        content-prefs.sqlite
>        cookies.sqlite
>        downloads.sqlite
>        formhistory.sqlite
>        permissions.sqlite
>        places.sqlite
>        Error: near line 1: database or disk is full
>        search.sqlite
>        signons.sqlite
>        urlclassifier2.sqlite
>        urlclassifier3.sqlite
>        webappsstore.sqlite
> ...
> I'm going to see if the vacuuming makes a difference, and if not I'll
> try clearing my browsing history...

Well, I'm not sure why you'd get the particular error.  I don't get
that.  But I thought I'd also mention this page, with an alternate
method:

http://lifehacker.com/5344418/make-firefox-faster-by-vacuuming-your-database

That operates on places.sqlite.  There's also the Vacuum Places
extension, which probably does the same thing periodically.  Hopefully
that improves things for you.

You could also list your extensions to see if someone's aware of a
stinker in the bunch.  I had problems with Autopager, for example.

Reid