How Chrome ate 21GB of storage • Hacker News Board

Re: How Chrome ate 21GB of storage

#31

Post by loeg » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 6:25 PM UTC

taeric wrote: post #24

DannyBee wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was (in fact, it's not clear it was ever broken) That's why if you look at the linked bug report, the only reports are of people who have used third party installers as root that screw up the permissions. The bug report is basically "when i screw this up, chrome doesn't notice and fix it for me".

I'm not at all sure how this excuses things. If there is a known state that can be reached by the browser, then either a) indicate why it cannot be fixed and give tips for the users or b) put in the code to fix it for the users.

Root can modify the filesystem arbitrarily. To what extent should developers proactively scan their own files for arbitrary changes by 3rd parties? How much work should go into this, rather than fixing other bugs or improving performance?

Re: How Chrome ate 21GB of storage

#32

Post by kevincox » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 6:28 PM UTC

rocky1138 wrote: post #5

Does this only occur on Macs?

According to the linked bug it is due to an issue to the DivX installer messing with the users chrome install. I don't know if the DivX installer on other platform experiences this issue but it sounds likely that it is only the Mac installer that has this issue.

Re: How Chrome ate 21GB of storage

#33

Post by mschuster91 » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 6:28 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #10

richard_mcp wrote: post #6

This is embarrassingly bad. I know memory is cheap and mostly plentiful, but to have this as a bug for 5+ years is horrible. It's as though Chrome is going the route of web pages and not paying to the size of itself.

Embarrassing, obvious, multi-year bugs are common to all browsers though. In Firefox, bookmarklets on CSP pages have been broken for 3.5 years and counting, with the end nowhere in sight. A handful of bugs that have taken a while to fix is no way to judge the overall quality of the browser.

It's been a loooooooong time since I've seen the last useful bookmarklet in the wild.

Un-useful, however, was stuff that tried to hijack your FB/Twitter ("hey guys paste this in ur browser and get some n00dz in return"). The amounts of crazy stuff people do for supposed nudes or whatever is just astonishing

Re: How Chrome ate 21GB of storage

#34

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 6:32 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: How Chrome ate 21GB of storage

#35

Post by taeric » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 6:37 PM UTC

loeg wrote: post #31

taeric wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not at all sure how this excuses things. If there is a known state that can be reached by the browser, then either a) indicate why it cannot be fixed and give tips for the users or b) put in the code to fix it for the users.

Root can modify the filesystem arbitrarily. To what extent should developers proactively scan their own files for arbitrary changes by 3rd parties? How much work should go into this, rather than fixing other bugs or improving performance?

In this case, there is no need to proactively scan anymore. It was reported by users.

I stressed the wrong thing before. If it can not be fixed, say so.

Re: How Chrome ate 21GB of storage

#36

Post by tedunangst » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 6:43 PM UTC

cmdrfred wrote: post #22

tedunangst wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately disk space, unlike memory, is infinite.

I'd much rather you use 21GB on my SSD than 2.1GB of my ram.

It's usually easier to reclaim RAM than storage. Which application am I not using right now? vs What data will I never need again?

Re: How Chrome ate 21GB of storage

#37

Post by agumonkey » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 6:49 PM UTC

AstroJetson wrote: post #3

I'm going to post a theory that with 500Gb drives pretty much the normal size that most people won't notice 2.5% tied up in Chrome installs.

Even with 1TB disk space I'm resentful of the amount of space "leaked" by software. Maybe I'm a naz-, maybe I was born in the MB era.. can't say. The other day I booted a P3 era machine and seeing all we did with "just" 128MB made me feel chills all over.

Re: How Chrome ate 21GB of storage

#38

Post by loeg » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 6:50 PM UTC

rocky1138 wrote: post #5

Does this only occur on Macs?

If you're using packages on Linux, the package manager is responsible for uninstalling the old version. For example, yum/dnf on Fedora/Redhat will only keep one version of a package during 'yum update' (with the exception of the kernel, where the most recent 3 versions as well as the running kernel are kept to avoid breaking boot).

Re: How Chrome ate 21GB of storage

#39

Post by loeg » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 6:51 PM UTC

taeric wrote: post #35

loeg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Root can modify the filesystem arbitrarily. To what extent should developers proactively scan their own files for arbitrary changes by 3rd parties? How much work should go into this, rather than fixing other bugs or improving performance?

In this case, there is no need to proactively scan anymore. It was reported by users. I stressed the wrong thing before. If it can not be fixed, say so.

Fair enough!

Re: How Chrome ate 21GB of storage

#40

Post by DiabloD3 » Sat, Sep 17, 2016, 6:51 PM UTC

taeric wrote: post #35

loeg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Root can modify the filesystem arbitrarily. To what extent should developers proactively scan their own files for arbitrary changes by 3rd parties? How much work should go into this, rather than fixing other bugs or improving performance?

In this case, there is no need to proactively scan anymore. It was reported by users. I stressed the wrong thing before. If it can not be fixed, say so.

How do you propose third parties modifying installers without Google's knowledge or permission something Google can fix?