Firefox SQLite bloat

[charlie]

Has anybody had their Firefox get progressively slooower lately? I sure did.

Page rendering, view switching, and startup were noticeably laggier and getting worse by the day. Startup was the most troublesome. My homepage is a locally stored page of links, so it usually comes up as quick as the browser. But blank screen delays started happening, momentarily at first, then seconds, and finally as long as 15 SECONDS before it would render.

Poking around in the Profiles directory, I saw that places.sqlite had plumped up to 25 megs. Guessing that could be the culprit, I did a full delete of private data, cookies, history, offline, everything. Closed, restarted, checked again -- and it hadn't shrunk a bit. Nor was the browser any peppier.

So, I deleted places.sqlite, restarted, and got immediate relief. My browser's back in form.

I also noticed the default setting for history retention was for at least 90 days. I've lowered it to 20.

Unfortunately, there isn't a built-in way to compact the database. There are third party SQLite tools, and an extension.

Unless there's something wrong with my browser, it looks like Firefox might have the same kind of problem IE has with its index.dat files, interminable bloat.

There is also another database file that tends to grow, urlclassifier3.sqlite, which holds URLS for known phishing and malware sites. Its current size is generally about 55megs (it's roughly the same for everyone who has never deleted it because gets updated periodically from Mozilla). It doesn't seem to affect performance in my browser, so I've left it alone, but it's non-compacted hugeness has prompted a bug ticket.

NOTE: You probably don't want to whack your places.sqlite file like I did, unless you don't mind losing all history, offline browsing, and possibly your bookmarks. Save the bookmarks first in your manager, then check in the bookmark backups folder to make sure a fresh file is there. Make copies and/or export them as HTML too, if you want extra insurance. Your bookmarks should be recreated when Firefox makes a new places.sqlite.

[RoyGBiv]

1. Interesting ...

Thanks.

I did a full-system reinstall a few weeks back and this time did not simply restore my old ~/.mozilla directory, instead starting from scratch except for the bookmarks. Since I started using Foxmarks (now Xmarks) to store my bookmarks offline so I could have the same set of marks on all the computers I use, that hasn't been a concern.

Anyway, one of the first things I noticed was how much zippier Firefox was. I had noticed some problems before, but I guess it had slowed down so gradually I hadn't paid attention to how poor the performance was overall. Over the last couple weeks, though, I've been aware that Firefox is slowing down. In the past few days it has basically frozen for as much as 30 seconds when opening a new link ... not Internet lag, just the browser freezing. I thought this was a problem with the lock.xxx file, but now I wonder.

I just whacked my places.sqlite file as well. It was also around 25 megs. Same experience.

[DemReadingDU]

2. interesting

This computer is older, only had 512mb memory, and everything was slow. I knew I did not have any viruses hogging the resources due to weekly diligence of computer anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-adware. Then this past week, I started getting yellow warning messages that virtual memory was low. So I upgraded to 2GB RAM, and is this computer quick!

But Firefox froze up again this morning. I'm still using version 2.0.0.20, and now I'm wondering if I have a Firefox bloat problem too, or maybe I should upgrade to version 3...

[Why Syzygy]

3. Don't know if you're aware...

but Firefox has a site with all versions available for download. That means if you upgrade, you can always go back to an earlier version.

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Installing+a+previous+version+of+Firefox

[DemReadingDU]

4. ok. great.

I was hesitant to upgrade to Firefox version 3 because of issues with any new version. Then I started getting memory problems, so knew I first had to upgrade to more RAM. I may have been tabbed into 6 or 7 different tabs this morning. So wasn't sure if that is too many tabs that caused the freezing, or if freezing was a version 2 issue, but that appears to also be version 3.

Now I remember that I switched from IE to Firefox last year, because IE used to freeze up on me. Hmm. Maybe it's bloat after all. My daughter will laugh at that, as her dog just went thru major expensive surgery due to bloat.

This forum is great, thanks for the helpful ideas!

[RoyGBiv]

5. Freezing is a Firefox issue ...

The version doesn't matter, there are issues with this when several criteria get met. I don't know if anyone knows what all the causes are.

Flash is the biggest problem. Websites that use AJAX are becoming one. Neither of these is strictly Firefox's fault, but it's not blameless either. I would really like it if FF's next iteration took a page from Chrome and treated the individual tabs as a separate process so that when one tab borks, the others remain okay.

I have figured out that the most common issue I face personally involves a DNS lookup. I use OpenDNS, and one of the routers between me and it has been laggy lately. Whenever it is lagging on a DNS lookup, Firefox momentarily suspends operation. 'Tis a bit annoying.