Firefox 18.0 / writing all the time on SD-Card. Normal ?

[ekianjo]

I love Firefox and would like to use it by default on Pandora. But I have this problem.

Everytime I use it (whether it's the 17.0 and recent 18.0 version), when I open a new page/tab, it starts writing on the SD card 1 like crazy (writing indicating stays consistently green all the way) - and when it does so, I cannot do anything - cannot scroll nor read the page - for like 20-30 seconds.  Way too long for me. 

I am assuming Firefox is doing some caching... but is it normal ? Does it happen to you too ? Is there a way to prevent so much, or such a long caching process ? Anything to tweak in the preferences ?

By the way, I have a Rebirth. 

 

[urjaman]

Note: the SD leds are access indicators, not writing indicators.

It can be that you're low on memory (but less likely on a rebirth than CC... but on CC you should always have real swap with firefox IMHO), or it can be that it just has so much stuff cached that checking whether components to be drawn on the page are on the cache is requiring a lot of reading. I've seen similar effects on my firefox (17.0 on CC), and I think it lessened a bit by going to firefox settings->advanced->network->cache checkbox override automatic cache management (these are approximations of the path to that setting, out of my memory so not exactly accurate but I think you will find it) and I set it so my cache limit is 10MB. Experiment with that to see if caching has an effect on this for you.

You can also empty your cache, etc there if you want to.

It could be something else too, but I dunno.

 

[Galaxis]

It's not swapping, and I see the same thing. I suspect it's either cache or history database (setting Firefox to nuke the cache at the end of each session helps, but doesn't remove all the heavy disk access). 

 

[ekianjo]

Thanks for the replies. I try to override the automatic cache settings but it did not change anything, it still keeps writing or accessing the SDcard like crazy and that makes it completely unusable when it does so.

If anyone has a solution I would be very happy to hear it...

 

[Askarus]

Make a backup of the appdata folder, then delete it.

Afte reinstalling it check the speed.

Maybe that helps.

Of course it's bad to lose all data. It's only to get a comparison how fast it is when it's a new installation.

 

[ekianjo]

Make a backup of the appdata folder, then delete it.

Afte reinstalling it check the speed.

Maybe that helps.

Of course it's bad to lose all data. It's only to get a comparison how fast it is when it's a new installation.

Thanks, will try that... i'll come back with a report tomorrow.

 

[Askarus]

There's always some speed improvement for me when deleting the appdata folder.

downside is a loss of data. that's why I don't do it on every release.

 

[dgame]

Try:

about:config

browser.newtabpage.enabled;false

 

[Asmo]

I noticed this too when I moved to SuperZaxxon 1.52 - at the same time I switched to FireFox 17, and found it would have these intermittent periods of SD LED activity and unresponsiveness - so I thought it was Firefox, but I reverted all the way back to FF11 that had been fluid previously, and it does the same thing too.

 

[ekianjo]

I confirm that uninstalling Firefox completely and reinstalling it made it MUCH faster. No more access to the SD card like crazy like before.FInally usable !

 

[Askarus]

Nice to hear.

Enjoy FireFox .

 

[Binky]

I fixed that by disabling cache - no reinstall required