firefox disk IO

[Wayne Feick]

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

The disk is not full, so delving into places.xqlite a little further...

        % sqlite3 places.sqlite 
        SQLite version 3.6.20
        Enter ".help" for instructions
        Enter SQL statements terminated with a ";"
        sqlite> .databases
        seq  name             file                                                      
        ---  ---------------  ----------------------------------------------------------
        0    main             /home/waf/.mozilla/firefox/da4fi9mo.default/places.sqlite 
        sqlite> .tables
        moz_anno_attributes  moz_favicons         moz_keywords       
        moz_annos            moz_historyvisits    moz_places         
        moz_bookmarks        moz_inputhistory   
        moz_bookmarks_roots  moz_items_annos    
        sqlite> select count(*) from moz_anno_attributes;
        15
        sqlite> select count(*) from moz_annos;
        642
        sqlite> select count(*) from moz_bookmarks;
        4045
        sqlite> select count(*) from moz_bookmarks_roots;
        5
        sqlite> select count(*) from moz_favicons;
        2359
        sqlite> select count(*) from moz_historyvisits;
        55377
        sqlite> select count(*) from moz_inputhistory;
        376
        sqlite> select count(*) from moz_items_annos;
        222
        sqlite> select count(*) from moz_keywords;
        5
        sqlite> select count(*) from moz_places;
        50409
        sqlite> 

I'm going to see if the vacuuming makes a difference, and if not I'll
try clearing my browsing history...

Wayne.