22 ms·

Maybe I am not understanding this right, but is this saying that Firefox will continually keep writing to the disk while idle? Does anyone know more about this?

by CoryG89 10y ago

Maybe I am not understanding this right, but is this saying that Firefox will continually keep writing to the disk while idle? Does anyone know more about this? Why would this be needed to restore session/tabs? Seems like it should only write after a user action or if the open page writes to storage? Even if it was necessary to write continually while idle, how could it possibly consume so much data in such a short period of time?

gcp 10y ago
Maybe I am not understanding this right, but is this saying that Firefox will continually keep writing to the disk while idle? Does anyone know more about this? Why would this be needed to restore session/tabs? This is very much the feature working as intended: Firefox captures webpage state every 15 seconds, so a crash, power outage, accidentally closing the browser etc will not result in data loss for the user. For storing the data persistently, it uses the persistent storage, i.e. your harddrive. For the HN crowd, that's going to be an SSD. The SSD can easily deal with the resulting write traffic with negligible effect on its lifetime - I have no idea why people even think this is an issue. Seems like it should only write after a user action or if the open page writes to storage Webpages can change their contents or state without user interaction. Webpages are also big and bloated. Storing a little data, all the time, 24/7, adds up over time to a surprisingly large number.
- CoryG89 10y ago
  I understand that pages can change their state without user interaction, but shouldn't the browser only write to disk when that actually happens? The browser has to be able to detect when these changes happen right? I understand that it's probably not an issue for most users/SSDs. However, if I open just a static HTML file and leave it idle, I don't think the browser should be continually writing to disk. If it is, then to me that is a bug. EDIT: Also, it seems like when I remember restoring a browser session after a crash, all the tabs get reloaded, not restoring the page state, just the tabs/URLs (ie. browser makes new request(s) for each restored tab). I usually use Chrome though, not sure if this has happened to me on Firefox.
  - heinrich5991 10y ago
    In Firefox, it might look like it's doing requests, however it'll show me a days-old HN newspage that it cannot possibly get from the server.
  - gcp 10y ago
    It won't write to disk with static pages. But most of the web doesn't fit that description, and you're bound to have a tab open that does something in the background. Yoric pointed out here that not being able to save tabs individually is a weak point of the current implementation.
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    > but shouldn't the browser only write to disk when that actually happens The problem is that it's happening continuously. Any page with analytics or ad engines (I'd guess easily 95% of the top visited web) is continually logging how long you've been on the page, scroll position, idle time, etc. And then setting a cookie to remember the session info/last time it was updated. It would be interesting to see what installing an ad blocker would do to these numbers.
- sliverstorm 10y ago
  I have no idea why people even think this is an issue. There is some element of slippery-slope. People say, "So what if your web browser uses 8GB of RAM for six tabs, you've got 16GB!". But I'd argue if every piece of software squandered RAM with such abandon, your machine would quickly choke. It's also got some good shock value, like the one-paragraph web article that overloads your phone & generates 75MB of traffic.

by CoryG89 10y ago

Maybe I am not understanding this right, but is this saying that Firefox will continually keep writing to the disk while idle? Does anyone know more about this? Why would this be needed to restore session/tabs? Seems like it should only write after a user action or if the open page writes to storage? Even if it was necessary to write continually while idle, how could it possibly consume so much data in such a short period of time?

gcp 10y ago

Maybe I am not understanding this right, but is this saying that Firefox will continually keep writing to the disk while idle? Does anyone know more about this? Why would this be needed to restore session/tabs? This is very much the feature working as intended: Firefox captures webpage state every 15 seconds, so a crash, power outage, accidentally closing the browser etc will not result in data loss for the user. For storing the data persistently, it uses the persistent storage, i.e. your harddrive. For the HN crowd, that's going to be an SSD. The SSD can easily deal with the resulting write traffic with negligible effect on its lifetime - I have no idea why people even think this is an issue. Seems like it should only write after a user action or if the open page writes to storage Webpages can change their contents or state without user interaction. Webpages are also big and bloated. Storing a little data, all the time, 24/7, adds up over time to a surprisingly large number.

CoryG89 10y ago
I understand that pages can change their state without user interaction, but shouldn't the browser only write to disk when that actually happens? The browser has to be able to detect when these changes happen right? I understand that it's probably not an issue for most users/SSDs. However, if I open just a static HTML file and leave it idle, I don't think the browser should be continually writing to disk. If it is, then to me that is a bug. EDIT: Also, it seems like when I remember restoring a browser session after a crash, all the tabs get reloaded, not restoring the page state, just the tabs/URLs (ie. browser makes new request(s) for each restored tab). I usually use Chrome though, not sure if this has happened to me on Firefox.
- heinrich5991 10y ago
  In Firefox, it might look like it's doing requests, however it'll show me a days-old HN newspage that it cannot possibly get from the server.
- gcp 10y ago
  It won't write to disk with static pages. But most of the web doesn't fit that description, and you're bound to have a tab open that does something in the background. Yoric pointed out here that not being able to save tabs individually is a weak point of the current implementation.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  > but shouldn't the browser only write to disk when that actually happens The problem is that it's happening continuously. Any page with analytics or ad engines (I'd guess easily 95% of the top visited web) is continually logging how long you've been on the page, scroll position, idle time, etc. And then setting a cookie to remember the session info/last time it was updated. It would be interesting to see what installing an ad blocker would do to these numbers.
sliverstorm 10y ago
I have no idea why people even think this is an issue. There is some element of slippery-slope. People say, "So what if your web browser uses 8GB of RAM for six tabs, you've got 16GB!". But I'd argue if every piece of software squandered RAM with such abandon, your machine would quickly choke. It's also got some good shock value, like the one-paragraph web article that overloads your phone & generates 75MB of traffic.