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Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox

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Re: Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox

#101

Even better just disable session restore entirely - Browser.sessionstore.enabled - Since Firefox 3.5 this preference is superseded with setting browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo and browser.sessionstore.max_windows_undo to 0. As I understand this feature is there so if the browser crashes it can restore your windows and tabs - I don't remember having a browser crash on me since the demise of Flash.

I actually find that webGL-heavy sites like Google Maps are quite good at crashing FF.

Re: Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox

#102
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung's low cost line is under warranty up to 40TB/year. Tests have shown that the actual drive lifetime is several times that. So basically, no, you don't have to worry about this. Essentially, people are complaining that the disks they bought are being used for their intended purpose: making sure your data doesn't disappear on a power loss.

No, "people" are not complaining about that; it's a fine attempt at a straw man, though. What the article complains about through implication is that Firefox is unnecessarily writing too much data to disk.

Why would it be unnecessary? The amount of data follows rather logically from the amount of website state it's capturing, and the interval seems totally like personal preference to me. Would you rather lose 60 seconds of work or 15? Uh, I'll take less data loss.

Re: Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox

#104
post #89
post #26

In Linux where should this be written? Inside the home folder? Maybe moving this folder to a HDD should suffice.

Why would you not want to use your SSD for what it's meant for?

Maybe because they would rather not have their ssd constantly being hit? Seems reasonable to me to move this is you have concerns about the longevity, or maybe IO bottlenecks.

Re: Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox

#106
post #81
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should it save the whole page when it only needs to remember the URL? At most, maybe also any form data you have entered. Small enough to keep thousands of pages in memory.

And what if the server sends something different back when you visit the URL again? The internet allows it to do that.

The job of a browser is to view the internet. Not to cache it.

Re: Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox

#107
post #61
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who really cares about restoring browser state? Maybe I lose part of an HN or Facebook post I'd been writing, but that's it. The feature should be opt-in, IMHO.

Hadn't thought about it until now, but this feature may be why I don't see "I wrote you a long message but accidentally closed the tab / hit the back button / my computer crashed and I lost it, so here's the highlights I remember" emails from friends and family anymore. I would much rather discover this caveat and opt out than expect my grandmother to know it's even possible to opt in.

At this point, isn't that responsiblity larged handled by server-based autosave? GMail / Google Docs being the big ones, I assume FB and other social networking sites do the same.

Re: Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox

#108
post #67

I have been running Firefox for a long time with an LD_PRELOAD wrapper which turns fsync() and sync() into a no-op. I feel it's little antisocial for regular desktop apps to assume it's for them to do this. Chrome is also a culprit, a similar sync'ing caused us problems at my employer's, inflated pressure on an NFS server where /home directories are network mounts. Even where we already put the cache to a local disk.…

> I have been running Firefox for a long time with an LD_PRELOAD wrapper which turns fsync() and sync() into a no-op.

For completeness, this is probably the eatmydata command.

Re: Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox

#109
post #67

I have been running Firefox for a long time with an LD_PRELOAD wrapper which turns fsync() and sync() into a no-op. I feel it's little antisocial for regular desktop apps to assume it's for them to do this. Chrome is also a culprit, a similar sync'ing caused us problems at my employer's, inflated pressure on an NFS server where /home directories are network mounts. Even where we already put the cache to a local disk.…

Would you be willing to post a how-to or example of doing this? I'm curious about how this trick works!

Re: Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox

#110
post #99
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still using 1/4 of your write unendurable for your fricking web browser. And exceeding the endurance rating can make you ineligible for warranty service/replacement of the drive.

The web browser is basically everything I do, though. My email is in it, my code review is in it, my IM is in it, on some of my machines my terminals are in it (via the Chrome mosh app).

Email/code review/IM/terminal doesn't justify 12GB of writes per day (and attendant hit to drive endurance/battery life). Those are lightweight activities. Emacs can do all those things and it doesn't write to disk unless you tell it to. Heck, even bloated beyond belief Outlook + Visual Studio + Skype + PowerShell wouldn't create anywhere near that kind of background activity.
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