Comments on: Vacuum your Firefox databases for better performance

By: Ferdinand

Ferdinand — Mon, 02 May 2011 20:30:46 +0000

It is no longer needed as FF4 does it automatically
See Bug 512854
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=512854

By: Guam

Guam — Sun, 01 May 2011 20:56:09 +0000

Does this still work on FF4?

By: rmpbklyn

rmpbklyn — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:46:23 +0000

do note, vacuum AFTER clearing all the cache, otherwise YES you won’t see a difference.
also if you learn SQL, you can remove items by dates, but the date are in system offset. eg cookies, are all or thing but the database has a date when it was stored. so if you want to keep recently and remove others, then try the SQL query method

By: Eduardo

Eduardo — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 23:08:38 +0000

wow, my places.sqlite went from 114 mb to 47 mb! thanks for the tip!

By: dj

dj — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 03:18:36 +0000

Great!
Places decreased by 2/3rd.
3.6.2 and 3.6.3 are having major cpu usage issues on Windows. Vacuum was one of the suggestions. FF is better on Linux.

I’m putting this into cron on Linux and have it execute in the background on machine startup.

Thanks.

By: 3ED

3ED — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:50:26 +0000

#!/bin/bash
# http://pastebin.pl/19714

if [ "`ps xo cmd=|grep -c "^firefox$"`" != "0" ]
then printf “First close firefox..\n”; exit 1
fi

if ! sqlcmd=”`which sqlite3 2> /dev/null`”
then printf “sqlite3: command not found..\n”; exit 1
fi

find ~/.mozilla/ -type f -name “*.sqlite” -exec $sqlcmd {} VACUUM \;
find ~/.mozilla/ -type f -name “*.sqlite” -exec $sqlcmd {} REINDEX \;

By: Joe Blow

Joe Blow — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:14:20 +0000

I just delete the whole damn thing. I don’t need the URL history or the stupid “awesome” bar. I can type in most url’s myself, and those which are too long can simply be bookmarked.

By: Anti-Google

Anti-Google — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 02:44:57 +0000

Gee, Maybe cuz FF2 was alot better than FF3.
.dat & .rdf files don’t need a server either.
“least amount of memory”, Yeah Firefox 3 doesnt hog memory [sic:)].
“if you regularly use the database”, The browser regularly uses the database. It’s not something you have control over if you use Firefox 3.
“Sqlite has great performance”, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=525753, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=515538

By: AnilG

AnilG — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 03:05:52 +0000

Wow! Yeah!

I vacuumed the lot in particular reducing places from 10MB to 5MB and I think another big one was urlclassifier down from 6MB to 2MB.

Start-up went from many seconds (10 – 20) to about 2 seconds!

That’s what I’m talking about!

By: Brendan

Brendan — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 11:42:10 +0000

My results (openSuse 11.2, Firefox 3.5.6)

before:
7168 2009-07-26 23:53 content-prefs.sqlite
2048 2009-12-24 01:58 cookies.sqlite
16384 2009-12-22 13:58 downloads.sqlite
4096 2009-12-24 01:58 formhistory.sqlite
2048 2009-12-23 18:07 permissions.sqlite
7860224 2009-12-24 11:30 places.sqlite
2048 2009-12-03 20:49 search.sqlite
11264 2009-07-18 12:10 signons.sqlite
53555200 2009-12-24 11:30 urlclassifier3.sqlite

after:
7168 2009-12-24 11:32 content-prefs.sqlite
2048 2009-12-24 11:32 cookies.sqlite
2048 2009-12-24 11:32 downloads.sqlite
4096 2009-12-24 11:32 formhistory.sqlite
2048 2009-12-24 11:32 permissions.sqlite
7278592 2009-12-24 11:32 places.sqlite
2048 2009-12-24 11:32 search.sqlite
11264 2009-12-24 11:32 signons.sqlite
24039424 2009-12-24 11:33 urlclassifier3.sqlite

No exact times, but startup now takes less than half the previous time.

By: LK

LK — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 19:17:31 +0000

My places.sqlite went from 25MB->17MB and urlclassifier3.sqlite from 55MB->25MB. Firefox startup changed from 30 seconds to 5. Excellent!
Thanks for this tip!

By: Kev

Kev — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:45:54 +0000

Hi
thanks ferdinand, i could not find the exact file “sqlite3″, the page had heaps
of files all called “sglite-3- something” and I didn’t know enough about coding
to know which actual name and file type i was supposed to use,
the info was great, i just created a new profile instead.
thank you ferdinand for the offer, i downloadd the plugin.
cheers Kev

By: Ferdinand

Ferdinand — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 07:54:06 +0000

If you can’t find out which one to download maybe you should try the extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/13878

By: Kev

Kev — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:42:43 +0000

Hi
can you tell me what the exact name of the file is for sql3 as there is not a file called exactly ( sqlite3 ) and not knowing code i dont want to make a mistake, also which section is in?

Is it – Source Code or Precompiled Binaries For Windows?

sqlite-amalgamation-3_6_21.zip
(1.03 MiB)

sqlite-amalgamation-3.6.21.tar.gz
(1.34 MiB)

sqlite-3_6_21-tea.tar.gz
(1.12 MiB)

sqlite-3.6.21.tar.gz
(2.83 MiB)

or these ones below?

sqlite-3_6_21.zip
(251.17 KiB)

tclsqlite-3_6_21.zip
(318.27 KiB)

sqlitedll-3_6_21.zip
(246.81 KiB)

sqlite3_analyzer-3.6.1.zip
(508.70 KiB)

Sorry but i am not sure which one to grab as my firefox is hanging on average 30 to 40 times a day, for about 4 to 6 minutes each time while im browsing each day.
thanks Kev

By: Robert

Robert — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:04:59 +0000

Had a bit of trouble starting FF after vacuuming. Thanks to Trx64 for the script. I added a few reporting stats. Here are my results for my default profile vacuuming. The numbers come from “du -sk *.sqlite”. The places didn’t clean up much. Most of the cleanup came from urlclassifier2.

firefox_clean.ksh: Profile: t3tdc82p.default, disk usage before: 30805
7 content-prefs.sqlite
302 cookies.sqlite
11 downloads.sqlite
98 formhistory.sqlite
2 permissions.sqlite
13312 places.sqlite
2 search.sqlite
11 signons.sqlite
6974 urlclassifier2.sqlite
6 webappsstore.sqlite
firefox_clean.ksh: Profile: t3tdc82p.default, disk usage after: 25234
7 content-prefs.sqlite
169 cookies.sqlite
8 downloads.sqlite
51 formhistory.sqlite
2 permissions.sqlite
12740 places.sqlite
2 search.sqlite
11 signons.sqlite
2181 urlclassifier2.sqlite
6 webappsstore.sqlite
firefox_clean.ksh: Profile: t3tdc82p.default, vacuumed: 5571
firefox_clean.ksh: Done: Vacuum Firefox sqlite databases

My environment has two profiles, each with a dozen addons and 10 or 18 windows, including liveHTTPheaders which may have been the cause of the startup reluctance. Another complication is that I just downloaded Firefox 3.5.4 today. When I restarted my non-default profile, it actually said “Well, this is embarrasing” and gave some instructions on how to work around the startup issue. I just clicked “restore previous session” and it worked fine. But that all made it hard to measure startup time. Shutdown time seems quicker, though.

By: NullHead

NullHead — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:36:31 +0000

Mine went from 11mb to 10 mb … not a huge difference. but I recently cleaned out my bookmarks and ran ccleaner.

By: DacoTaco

DacoTaco — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:58:33 +0000

for windows this should be all you need to do (also, sqlite3.exe should be in C:\) :
for /f %a in (‘dir /s /b C:\*.sqlite’) do (C:\sqlite3 %a vacuum)

By: karel

karel — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 19:58:22 +0000

Briljant! I came across this subject after experiencing problems with FF 3.5.3.

It was slowing down and became none responsive.
places.sqlite was 60 Mb after VACUUM only 500 Kb.

If you use Total Commander you can semi automate the VACUUM proces
TC–>Start–>Change Start Menu–>Add Item–>New Title for menu entry–> FF sqlite optimizer
Command: X:\Pathto\Firefox\Data\profile\sqlite3.exe
Parameters: %N VACUUM
Click OK.
Close FF
Now navigate to a sqlite file go to Start and select “FF sqlite optimizer”!
See how your file size reduces!!!!

By: Web Studio 13

Web Studio 13 — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:36:35 +0000

7 Things to Do to Make Your Mozilla Firefox Lightning Fast…

Since I updated my Firefox to the latest version (3.5.3), I’ve always wanted to do some housekeeping so to make my browser run faster.Â Finally, I got it done today.Â To my surprise, the tweaking really does wonders for me.Â Now my Firefox is ……

By: bandi

bandi — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:17:16 +0000

not an insane size improvement, but serious speed boost!

By: Double T

Double T — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 22:33:34 +0000

so a combo of “Defraggler” and the use of Ccleaner doesn’t do the trick?
hey..no wait..the Ccleaner does all that crap in a flash..sry, bugger me. otherwise TWEAK ya Firfox, ya brainless twats!

By: Ferdinand

Ferdinand — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 06:07:28 +0000

You can find descriptions of Firefox profile files here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox#Files
[q]Cleaning out the temp folders did NOTHING.[/q]
That problem has been fixed with Firefox 3.5.1 so you shouldn’t need to clean out your temp folders. And you can be sure that Mozilla is working on a way to automatically vacuum.

By: John Jeffers VE3GYV

John Jeffers VE3GYV — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:20:01 +0000

This has worked exceptionally well on both xp sp3 FF 3.5.1 and openSuSE FF 3.5.1 while the start up was slow. So what? The really annoying part was the thing being slow to respond to cursor, google search bar and just about anything else one could imagine.

Cleaning out the temp folders did NOTHING.

Might I suggest a Tools->extensions that performs sqlite3 vacuum. Then no one has to think about what is the best way now. And you do it for example on a schedule like for example the FEBE extension does.

Then it becomes the uses responsibility.

By the way good article. I’m with Amir where do I find the meanings of not only sqlite files but use of all the mozilla files on every platform.

I get ticked about a lot of this “hide and go seek knowledge”. Yes I do embedded kernel development and read the source. But you know I can only specialize and correct so much at a time. And for my stuff I leave ISO-9001 quality reviewed documentation.

I’m with Mike Frysinger with this if I can help the next guy I do. So I am not complaining, I am asking how can I help the next person?

By: Amir Syafrudin

Amir Syafrudin — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:47:27 +0000

I guess I’m one of those people who doesn’t have big sqlite files for their Firefox profiles. Nevertheless, this is still a good hint to upgrade Firefox performance. I just hope we can have a more automatic vacuuming process in future Firefox releases. I believe this would be a great addition to Firefox users who dislikes going technical.

On a side note, where can I find definitions for each sqlite files?

Thank you.

By: co

co — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:00:02 +0000

A simple windows script. It needs to be changed for location of sqlite3.exe. I put common utilities in ‘C:\Bin’.

@echo off
setlocal
pushd

REM http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2009/07/vacuum-your-firefox-databases-for-better-performance/
REM http://www.sqlite.org/download.html

set profiles=%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles
cd /d %profiles%

dir /s *.sqlite
for /r %%a in (*.sqlite) do (
C:\Bin\sqlite3.exe “%%a” vacuum
)
dir /s *.sqlite

popd