Last time I did a factory reset to Firefox 29 I was able to get rid of circa half space of profile’s directory (~/.mozilla), from 150 Mb to 50 Mb approximately. Even by installing AdBlock Plus again it raised to some 62 Mb. I understand factory reset keeps things such as browsing and search history, as I could see indeed.
Now, after a month of usage the profile’s directory is circa 150-160 Mb again. I took an in-depth look and saw that inside ~/.mozilla/firefox/[8_letters].default-[13_numbers] there are 2 specially heavy files: netpredictions.sqlite and places.sqlite. Add-on related files or directories show no change in size and the rest of files are in the Kb or few Mb order, so those 2 sqlite files should be the ones that get heavier and heavier.
I have just kept browsing the usual websites I see (forums, comic galleries, image galleries, youtube). Haven’t downloaded anything from Mega this past month. I keep constantly deleting ALL of cookies, cache, active sessions, offline website data and site preferences under menu History - Clean recent history; just leaving browsing/downloads history and formulars and search history unchecked.
What kind of information do those freaking files store? How can I depurate? And how can I prevent they get bigger again? Frankly I’d like to keep my profile directory at a decent constant size without having to loose all of my browsing history.
Thanks.
Are you running low on disk space? 150 MB isn’t really a lot. Try reducing the cache content. In the FF settings, Go to Advanced->Network and check “Override automatic cache content.” Set the cache limit to whatever you wish.Realize this can slow FF down if it’s too low.
On 2014-06-11 04:26, F style wrote:
>
> Last time I did a factory reset to Firefox 29 I was able to get rid of
> circa half space of profile’s directory (~/.mozilla), from 150 Mb to 50
> Mb approximately. Even by installing AdBlock Plus again it raised to
> some 62 Mb. I understand factory reset keeps things such as browsing and
> search history, as I could see indeed.
Don’t forget “~/.cache/mozilla/firefox/”. Mine has more than 330 MB. 
> Now, after a month of usage the profile’s directory is circa 150-160 Mb
> again. I took an in-depth look and saw that inside
> ~/.mozilla/firefox/[8_letters].default-[13_numbers] there are 2
> specially heavy files: netpredictions.sqlite and places.sqlite. Add-on
> related files or directories show no change in size and the rest of
> files are in the Kb or few Mb order, so those 2 sqlite files should be
> the ones that get heavier and heavier.
Mine weight 90 MB between them. Huh, no, my netpredictions.sqlite has 2
megs. But I have urlclassifier3.sqlite at 57 megs.
> What kind of information do those freaking files store? How can I
> depurate? And how can I prevent they get bigger again? Frankly I’d like
> to keep my profile directory at a decent constant size without having to
> loose all of my browsing history.
Google “what is places.sqlite”, first few hits:
The file “places.sqlite” stores the annotations, bookmarks,
favorite icons, input history, keywords, and browsing history
(a record of visited pages).
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Places.sqlite
Short story: leave it big.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)
I’m not sure what’s in “netpredictions.sqlite”. Mine is 750K.
My “places.sqlite” is 10M. The “places.sqlite” file contains browsing history and bookmarks.
The good news is that you can delete “places.sqlite”. But make sure that firefox is not running when you delete it. You will lose the saved history, but bookmarks will be restored from the “bookmarkbackups” directory.
If you do delete, save a copy for safety. It’s been a couple of years since I last did that, so I can’t guarantee that the behavior has not changed (though I doubt it).
My setting to delete history on close is likely keeping the size of “places.sqlite” under control. Perhaps it is also keeping “netpredictions.sqlite” under control.
This is what netpredictions.sqlite is:
http://www.ghacks.net/2014/05/11/seer-disable-firefox/
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2813183
The file sizes you mention are perfectly normal. Unless you have so little free diskspace that a couple hundred MB is important, I don’t understand why you are concerned about this. If you have so little free harddisk space you need to be concerned about Firefox using a couple hundred MB you need to get more free disk space somehow. Besides the obvious solution of getting a bigger harddisk, you could try and find some way to free up some space, like installing packages you don’t use or clearing zypper cache of downloaded packages (‘zypper clean’). Otherwise, stop worrying about it.
On 2014-06-11 05:46, nrickert wrote:
>
> F_style;2648413 Wrote:
>> ]there are 2 specially heavy files: netpredictions.sqlite and
>> places.sqlite.
>
> I’m not sure what’s in “netpredictions.sqlite”. Mine is 750K.
Apparently it is new since version 29.
It is related to “about:config > network.seer.enabled”
They say “its basically a connection cache”.
Other post says look here:
https://blog.mozilla.org/tglek/2011/05/13/firefox-telemetry/
https://blog.mozilla.org/tglek/2011/09/20/firefox-7-telemetry-faster-startup/
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)