jmcfarlane

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July 26, 2008 @00:09 (Updated: July 26, 2008 @00:11) Same topic | Reply to this post This post is read only View this post by itself

Mozilla Firefox-3.0.1 fsync issue - workaround
Firefox-3.0.1 ships with a feature that is designed to keep your bookmarks and things protected in the event of a crash or something, but it comes at the expense of filesystem IO. Firefox calls fsync pretty frequently under normal usage, which can have the effect of making your box feel like it's "locking up" sorta. You can see how many calls are being made to fsync via this command:

user# strace -p `pidof firefox` -e fsync -tT

You can also work around this "feature" and get prevent the blocking issue by going to "about:config" and adding a new "Integer" key named "toolkit.storage.synchronous" with a value of 0. This will make things faster, but you might loose your last book mark or page visit in the event of a crash.


John M.





firefox
fsync
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mozilla
strace
FCGI/WSGI
0.13.3
183.454037 ms