Closed Bug 216204 Opened 21 years ago Closed 19 years ago

Mac OS X disk cache should use ~/Library/Cache

Categories

(Core :: Networking: Cache, enhancement)

Product:
Core
Component:
Networking: Cache
Platform:
PowerPC
macOS
Type:
enhancement
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED FIXED
Milestone:
mozilla1.8beta2

People

(Reporter: rbraun+moz, Assigned: darin.moz)

References

Details

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.5b) Gecko/20030814
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.5b) Gecko/20030814

Here at CMU, we have a network of various types of workstations (Windows, Mac,
Linux, Solaris) in labs called "clusters". We use the OpenAFS file system to
implement roaming profiles on Mac and Unix. On our Mac OS X machines, the home
directory is local (so the desktop is local), but the Library folder is
symlinked into AFS (along with another symlink to point users saving files into
AFS). This setup has worked very well for us for over a year, but it presents a
unique management problem; most software works fine in this environment, but
none was designed for it.

One difficulty is that we don't want temporary data such as web browser caches
stored in AFS, for both disk space and performance reasons. Thus we symlink
Library/Caches back into local disk, which takes care of that problem for
Internet Explorer and Safari. Both of those browsers follow the ad hoc, de facto
standard of using Library/Caches for cache; Apple doesn't actually list that
directory in their System Overview for some reason.

However, our priority for browser support is Netscape 7 (and in the future, some
variant of Mozilla) -- MSIE is being phased out upstream with no likely
replacement, it is slow, and it has never had proper certificate handling for
our local CA, among many other issues with it. Safari currently lacks polish,
and we haven't made any commitment on that yet.

Currently, we use a kludge which has worked just fine for over a year to make
Netscape save its cache locally. We set up a set of ns/moz prefs using a test
account with the home directory /Users/CurrentUser, and set the cache to a
well-defined local disk location within that home directory. The LoginHook on
cluster machines ensures that these prefs are installed in user accounts if they
don't exist or have been corrupted, and it also makes sure that
/Users/CurrentUser is a symlink to the 

I would like to avoid some of this hassle in the future, however. I understand
that making moz cache handling work like IE/safari would compromise a lot of
flexibility; however, the Caches directory is there for a reason, and it is very
convenient and clean to be able to just symlink that locally and have many
applications store temporary data on local disk rather than on the network. Some
suggestions:

1. It might be nice if moz could handle home directory relative cache location,
so that preferences moved from account to account would work without kludges
like /Users/CurrentUser. [This is not a Mac-specific concept, but on Unix we're
afforded the luxury of user-specific mozilla startup scripts, which set up the
cache location automatically. We can't do this on the mac because we want the
application launch itself to work without a wrapper script; in addition, the
cache is stored as a base64-encoded structure in the prefs file which makes
manipulating it more difficult.]

2. Moz could have a "default cache" on the mac and if the cache location is left
blank it would use this location. This could use the preferences salt as a
directory name within the Caches folder, so multiple profiles would still work.

Just some ideas...


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
In paragraph 4 above, last sentence should read

"...it also makes sure that /Users/CurrentUser is a symlink to the home
directory of the user logged in on console."
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Reporter, doesn't the preference 'browser.cache.disk.parent_directory' help ?
See bug 78480 comment 43. Use about:config to change that.

I agree that it would be nice to store the cache-files by default in the
standard Mac location (~/Library/Caches). Dupe of bug 74085 ?
Jo: We already set browser.cache.disk.parent_directory -- but since on the Mac
it is a base64-encoded structure, we can't set it dynamically for each user, so
we use one common location for everyone that's precalculated, and symlinks to
fake it such that the location is always in the current user's home directory.

Does anyone know of we have a bug that requests we move to using a UNIX path for
this pref?

This is probably a CFM->Mach-O issue that I never really had time to think about?
Depends on: 217146
This omission also confuses the Retrospect backup, which is designed to ignore
~/Library/Caches by default.  It is in addition a problem with Camino as well.
(In reply to comment #4)
> Does anyone know of we have a bug that requests we move to using a UNIX path for
> this pref?
 
I filed that one as bug 217146

> This is probably a CFM->Mach-O issue that I never really had time to think about?
Blocks: 31732
-> defaults.

I'm trying to push for re-thinking the location of cache for each platform.
Summary: Mac mozilla cache is in the "wrong" place → Mac OS X disk cache should use ~/Library/Cache
Blocks: 239288
Should there be similar bugs for Camino and Firefox or will a fix of this bug
(changing the default location) also affect them?
Once mailnews irons out profile relative paths, we should just switch to using 
that (which entails a new preference anyway) for the cache folder.
*** Bug 239284 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Blocks: 239284
*** Bug 289098 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This is very similar to bug 74085.  The solution for that bug could be used to
fix this bug.
Assignee: gordon → darin
Depends on: 74085
Target Milestone: --- → mozilla1.8beta2
This bug is fixed now with the patch for bug 291033.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 19 years ago
Depends on: 291033
No longer depends on: 217146
Resolution: --- → FIXED
(In reply to comment #13)
> This bug is fixed now with the patch for bug 291033.

Yep, I can see that the Cache-folder and the fastload file (XUL.mfasl) are
really in the ~/Library/Cache folder. It's salted exactly like the profile.

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050426
Firefox/1.0+
In Camino, ~/Library/Cache has not been used yet. 


20050426 nightly build and Camino that does build for myself now
2005042722 (v0.8+)
> In Camino, ~/Library/Cache has not been used yet. 

That's right; Camino wasn't fixed.  Someone should file a separate bug on Camino.
Bug 239284 is specific to Camino, it was filed already a while ago.
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