Speed up firefox, vacuum your firefox sqlite3 db

July 23, 2009 | In: Blog, Technology, Ubuntu

Firefox is agreeably slower than most other browsers (specially Google Chrome) – even on my Ubuntu.

Here is a great tip – after deploying which, I did felt the response time for cold startup and the UrlBar get better.

And here are the results…

for file in `ls *.sqlite`
do
ls -lh $file
sqlite3 $file vacuum
sqlite3 $file reindex
ls -lh $file
done

-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 7.0K 2009-07-05 11:37 content-prefs.sqlite [BEFORE]
-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 7.0K 2009-07-23 00:30 content-prefs.sqlite [AFTER]

-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 553K 2009-07-23 00:25 cookies.sqlite
-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 376K 2009-07-23 00:30 cookies.sqlite

-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 97K 2009-07-23 00:15 downloads.sqlite
-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 4.0K 2009-07-23 00:30 downloads.sqlite

-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 257K 2009-07-23 00:20 formhistory.sqlite
-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 251K 2009-07-23 00:30 formhistory.sqlite

-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 2.0K 2009-07-11 13:51 permissions.sqlite
-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 2.0K 2009-07-23 00:30 permissions.sqlite

-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 18M 2009-07-23 00:26 places.sqlite
-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 12M 2009-07-23 00:30 places.sqlite

-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 2.0K 2009-06-05 21:09 search.sqlite
-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 2.0K 2009-07-23 00:30 search.sqlite

-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 11K 2008-11-04 22:02 signons.sqlite
-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 11K 2009-07-23 00:30 signons.sqlite

-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 3.0K 2009-05-31 02:03 sqlinjectionDB.sqlite
-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 3.0K 2009-07-23 00:30 sqlinjectionDB.sqlite

-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 303K 2009-07-09 23:41 ubiquity_ann.sqlite
-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 294K 2009-07-23 00:30 ubiquity_ann.sqlite

-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 2.0K 2009-07-05 11:39 ubiquity_skin_memory.sqlite
-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 2.0K 2009-07-23 00:30 ubiquity_skin_memory.sqlite

-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 2.0K 2009-07-11 10:36 ubiquity_suggestion_memory.sqlite
-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 2.0K 2009-07-23 00:30 ubiquity_suggestion_memory.sqlite

-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 287K 2008-11-23 21:09 urlclassifier2.sqlite
-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 142K 2009-07-23 00:30 urlclassifier2.sqlite

-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 19M 2009-07-23 00:28 urlclassifier3.sqlite
-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 19M 2009-07-23 00:30 urlclassifier3.sqlite

-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 2.0K 2009-06-13 00:10 webappsstore.sqlite
-rw-r–r– 1 makuchaku makuchaku 2.0K 2009-07-23 00:30 webappsstore.sqlite

I did not measure the cold startup time before and after the changes, but I can certainly see ff coming up more fast now. Fast enough – to make me sit and write this blog entry in the middle of coding a rails app.

More explanation about SQLite’s VACUUM and REINDEX operations.

Enjoy