455253 - Optimizations for slow solid-state drives

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 442967

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Phil Kao]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008070208 Firefox/3.0.1

While using firefox on an eee 901, there are numerous delays/lockups after opening any web page. The reason for these are the history writes, i.e., disabling history fixes the problem. I would like to keep history but avoid these delays. 

I propose that firefox have a mode specifically optimized for flash/slow solid-state drives which minimizes writes, and only writes in the background, and doesn't lock up the user interface while it does so. If firefox only wrote history file/other file updates when it exited or at timed intervals, it would minimize disk usage and improve performance.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open browser where profile directory is on flash drive
2. Navigate to any webpage
Actual Results:  
Lockups/delays as flash drive is written to

Expected Results:  
Firefox caches writes in RAM until some timer expires then writes in the background.

There are a few ways to fix this, including only using RAM for these files and writing only when firefox exits, or writing only at specified intervals. This is the best option for solid-state drives which don't like many writes. Another option is to background write.

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

Most of this work is done in bug 442967. Though, it's a more general performance optimization than just a background thread.