319799 - Locate default cache out of .mozilla profile directory. Separate volatile and personal data.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 239254

(SeaMonkey :: Startup & Profiles, enhancement)

Description

[Bryce Mozilla Nesbitt]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050921
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050921

Right now, the mozilla profile contains stuff that's important for me to back up and keep (like my address book), and lots of cache entries and chrome temporary files.  This makes it difficult to tune my backups.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Attempt to back up all your personal data.  Note that you get 50MB or more of cache data as baggage.




Expected Results:  
It would be great if Mozilla could create two separate locations, one for "volatile" information which can be recreated on demand, and one for personal information of lasting value.

Even if this were just in two separate directories it would help, because I could mark one to ignore during backup (e.g. .mozilla_prefs and .mozilla_cache).

Comment 1

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

What does your URL of http://www.obviously.com have to do with this bug?

Comment 2

[Elmar Ludwig]

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.cache.disk.parent_directory and bug 239254

Comment 3

[Bryce Mozilla Nesbitt]

Splitting "volatile" and "personal" data would also be a first step toward fixing bug #239254 .  Once you identify what can be recreated on demand, you know what needs storing in a more persistent place (like the NFS mounted server), and what can be safetly relocated to a fast place (like /tmp).

My personal cache is already set to /tmp.  But it requried that I set it manually.  And Mozilla/Firefox still keeps all sorts of other "temp" things in .mozilla.  Mozilla is not alone.  Gnome and KDE do the same thing -- storing things like image thumbnails and boatloads of other recreatable data.

The URL is irrelvant, sorry.

Comment 4

[Elmar Ludwig]

> But it requried that I set it manually.

There is UI for this: Preferences → Advanced → Cache → Set Cache Options.
Of course you have to manually select a path since Mozilla cannot know where you want to put it.

So, what do you really ask for here, considering that moving the cache out of the profile directory is already possible?

Comment 5

[Bryce Mozilla Nesbitt]

Well, there's no UI for firefox (Though I did update the zine page you linked to, giving instructions).


I'm asking that by *default* Mozilla separate "volatile" data (which can be recreated on demand) from "personal" data (which must be stored and backed up).

One option is to split the profile into ".mozilla_prefs" ".mozilla_cache", then allow relocating .mozilla_cache to /tmp or a local disc, or whereever.

Comment 6

[Elmar Ludwig]

> Well, there's no UI for firefox

That's true, but this bug is filed in the Mozilla Suite component. If you want UI for Firefox, you need to file a separate bug for this (although that will likely be WONTFIXed because the Firefox prefs dialog is keep deliberately simple).

> One option is to split the profile into ".mozilla_prefs" ".mozilla_cache"

Which content - apart from the browser cache and the XUL fastload files - do you expect to be in the ".mozilla_cache" directory?

Comment 7

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

the code now supports this kind of split. it therefore looks like this is only a matter of making linux use this code. so, marking as duplicate.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 239254 ***