speed up firefox

April 23rd, 2009 at 11:48 (libre) · short url

firefox 3 features an awesome address bar that helps you search through your history (and bookmarks) by just typing a word or phrase that’s part of either the url or the title.

the problem is that if you keep the browsing history for a long time (lime me) the address bar search process becomes very slow.

a cool solution is to place the ~/.mozilla folder on ram (which is a lot faster than disk). i already have /tmp on ram, so i made a symbolic link ~/.mozilla pointing to /tmp/mozilla. and then i use the script below in order to save/restore the contents of mozilla folder:

#!/bin/bash

if [ $# -lt 1 ]; then
    echo "usage: ff_sync.sh save/restore"
    exit 0
fi

action=$1

if [ "$action" = "save" ]; then
    size=`du -xs /home/user/.mozilla/ | awk '{print $1}'`
    digits=`expr length $size`
    if [ $digits -gt 4 ]; then
        rsync -avi --delete /home/user/.mozilla/ /home/user/.mozilla_save/
    else
        echo 'no!'
        exit 0
    fi
fi

if [ "$action" = "restore" ]; then
    mkdir -p /tmp/mozilla\
    rsync -avi --delete /home/user/.mozilla_save/ /home/user/.mozilla/
fi

all i have to do is run this script with the appropriate option when booting/halting the pc. on gentoo you have /etc/conf.d/local.start and /etc/conf.d/local.stop for this kind of things.

and i have to say that i’m really impressed. firefox speed improved amazingly. and i mean firefox overall speed, not just the address bar ;)

2 Comments

  1. Gen2lyNo Gravatar said,

    April 26, 2009 at 12:06

    Unknown Unknown Unknown O.S. Unknown O.S.

    Yeah, i’ve noticed my firefox begin to lag after a bit of time. putting it in ram is a good idea. nice tip.

  2. CtsNo Gravatar said,

    May 8, 2009 at 12:06

    Unknown Unknown Unknown O.S. Unknown O.S.

    Very interesting idea.

    But there is one problem…on a crash i will lose all settings, extensions etc i’ve made and installed since my last reboot.

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