Karin Chan

Keep Your Browser Profiles In tmpfs (RAM) For Reduced Disk Writes And Increased Performance With Profile Sync Daemon

<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img alt="ram" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3UZk_Ym5TKs/URzCNMJ7jXI/AAAAAAAANsA/XAgqCLK_9ZM/s220/ram.jpg" /></div><br /><b><a href="https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon">Profile Sync Daemon</a> is a tool to move the web browser profile to RAM, using tmpfs, which has the advantage of reducing disk writes </b>(useful for SSDs, some would say)<b>, increased speed and responsiveness. </b></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>The tool supports most browsers</b>: <b>Chromium, Google Chrome, Firefox (stable, beta, aurora and <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2011/05/install-firefox-nightly-from-ubuntu-ppa.html">firefox-trunk</a>), Conkeror, Midori, Opera</b> (including <b>Opera Next</b>) and <b>Qupzilla</b> and is based on an old script (we've covered it on <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2009/05/speed-up-firefox-by-mounting-profile-in.html">WebUpd8</a> back in 2009), with some extra features: this is a daemonized script and has recovery protection, as well as support for all the above mentioned browsers as opposed to the old script which only supports Firefox. It's also a lot easier to use.</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Since RAM content is cleared on reboot, Profile Sync Daemon <b>automatically syncs the profile back to the physical disk</b> using a symbolic link and rsync at a given time interval. Furthermore, the profile is synced back to the hard disk before you shut down or restart your computer, so no profile data is lost. Still, <b>use it at your own risk!</b></div><br /><a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: justify;">By default, Profile Sync Daemon syncs all your browsers profiles in RAM, but this can be changed from its configuration file, along with some other options.</div><br /><br /><br /><h2>Install Profile Sync Daemon</h2><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Profile Sync Daemon is available for Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch Linux, Chakra Linux, Debian and Gentoo.</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Before installing it, make a backup of your browser profile just in case!</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Too install it in Ubuntu, use the following commands:</b></div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graysky/utils<br />sudo apt-get update<br />sudo apt-get install profile-sync-daemon</code></pre><br />For <b>Arch Linux</b>, install it via <a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/profile-sync-daemon">AUR</a>.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">For <b>other Linux distributions</b>, see the Profile Sync Daemon <a href="https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon">GitHub</a> page.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>After the installation, you must configure it</b>. The instructions below are for Ubuntu and may be different for other Linux distributions (I'll link to the Profile Sync Daemon Arch Linux wiki at the bottom of the article for more info). Open <i>/etc/psd.conf</i> as root with a text editor:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>gksu gedit /etc/psd.conf</code></pre><br />then scroll to <i>USERS=""</i> and add your username, example:<br /><pre class="source-code"><code>USERS="andrew"</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Save the file but don't close it</b> - just switch to a terminal and run the following command:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>profile-sync-daemon parse</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">This should display all the browser profiles Profile Sync Daemon can sync to RAM. Now that you know all the browsers / profiles available on your system that this tool supports, go back to the text editor where you were editing <i>/etc/psd.conf,</i> scroll down to <i>#BROWSERS=""</i>, uncomment it (remove the "#") and add the browsers for which you want to mount the profile in RAM (if they showed up when running "profile-sync-daemon parse"), separated by spaces. Examples:</div><pre class="source-code"><code>BROWSERS="firefox"</code></pre>or:<br /><pre class="source-code"><code>BROWSERS="firefox chromium"</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">If you don't uncomment this, all the supported browser profiles will use tmpfs.<br /><br /><br />See if you need to change anything else in this file (you usually don't need to change anything else because the <i>VOLATILE</i> path is automatically set based on the Linux distribution used, so it's set to <i>/run/shm</i> by default in Ubuntu), then save it.</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Now you need to close the browsers added to <i>/etc/psd.conf</i> - make sure they are not still running! - and start the Profile Sync Damon:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo service psd start</code></pre>That's it.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Optional: more frequent syncs to disk</b>. By default, Profile Sync Daemon runs every hour (using a cron.hourly job) and syncs your browser profile(s) to the disk, but if you want more frequent syncs, you can add a cron job:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>crontab -e</code></pre>And add this:<br /><pre class="source-code"><code>*/5 * * * *     /usr/bin/profile-sync-daemon sync &> /dev/null</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The above line will sync your browser profile(s) to the disk every 5 minutes, but you can change this to anything you want (for more info, see the <a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CronHowto">Cron howto</a>).</div><br /><br /><br /><h2>How to check if Profile Sync Daemon is working</h2><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jhPf-1wyuu0/URy4-YfTg4I/AAAAAAAANqs/49fg5B2Y9hQ/s1600/tmpfs-run-shm.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="tmpfs browser profiles /run/shm" border="0" height="103" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jhPf-1wyuu0/URy4-YfTg4I/AAAAAAAANqs/49fg5B2Y9hQ/s320/tmpfs-run-shm.png" title="tmpfs browser profiles /run/shm" width="320" /></a></div><br />To see if Profile Sync Daemon is working and your browser profile is using tmpfs, you can navigate to /run/shm (in Ubuntu; on Debian it should be <i>/dev/shm</i>) and see if your profiles show up there. You can also check your browser profile directory (e.g.: <i>~/.mozilla/firefox</i>) to see if the profile folder (e.g., for Firefox, it's usually called <i>123456.default</i>, where 123456 are some random letters / numbers) is now a symbolic link to a folder in <i>/run/shm</i>.</div><br /><br />Further info:<br /><ul><li><a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Profile-sync-daemon">https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Profile-sync-daemon</a> - instructions for Arch Linux (should also work for other Linux distributions using systemd) and generic info</li><li><a href="https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon">https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon</a></li></ul>

Keep Your Browser Profiles In tmpfs (RAM) For Reduced Disk Writes And Increased Performance With Profile Sync Daemon

Profile Sync Daemon is a tool to move the web browser profile to RAM, using tmpfs, which has the advantage of reducing disk writes (useful ...

<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img.netupd8.com/dmidecode.png"><img alt="Dmidecode ubuntu" src="http://img.netupd8.com/dmidecode_thumb.png" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">If you need a quick way to find out how much RAM your Linux system supports or to determine the number of DIMM slots available, you can use a command line tool called "<a href="http://www.nongnu.org/dmidecode/">dmidecode</a>".</div><br /><a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>To find out the maximum RAM capacity and the number of RAM slots available</b>, use the following command:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo dmidecode -t 16</code></pre><br />The output should look something like this:<br /><pre class="source-code"><code># dmidecode 2.11<br />SMBIOS 2.6 present.<br /><br />Handle 0x0032, DMI type 16, 15 bytes<br />Physical Memory Array<br />     Location: System Board Or Motherboard<br />     Use: System Memory<br />     Error Correction Type: None<br />     <b>Maximum Capacity:</b> 16 GB<br />     Error Information Handle: Not Provided<br />     <b>Number Of Devices:</b> 4<br /></code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The "Maximum Capacity" is the maximum RAM supported by your system, while "Number of Devices" is the number of memory (DIMM) slots available on your computer.</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">To see <b>complete memory information</b>, including the info above along with <b>currently installed memory</b> information (RAM speed, size, etc.), use:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo dmidecode -t memory</code></pre><br />Here's an example output for the command above:<br /><br /><pre class="source-code"><code># dmidecode 2.11<br />SMBIOS 2.6 present.<br /><br />Handle 0x0032, DMI type 16, 15 bytes<br />Physical Memory Array<br />     Location: System Board Or Motherboard<br />     Use: System Memory<br />     Error Correction Type: None<br />     Maximum Capacity: 16 GB<br />     Error Information Handle: Not Provided<br />     Number Of Devices: 4<br /><br />Handle 0x0033, DMI type 17, 28 bytes<br />Memory Device<br />     Array Handle: 0x0032<br />     Error Information Handle: Not Provided<br />     Total Width: 64 bits<br />     Data Width: 64 bits<br />     <b>Size: 2048 MB</b><br />     Form Factor: SODIMM<br />     Set: None<br />     Locator: ChannelA-DIMM0<br />     Bank Locator: BANK 0<br />     <b>Type: DDR3</b><br />     Type Detail: Synchronous<br />     <b>Speed: 1333 MHz</b><br />     Manufacturer: Samsung<br />     Serial Number: 7732E9D6<br />     Asset Tag: 9876543210<br />     Part Number: M471B5773DH0-CH9  <br />     Rank: Unknown<br /><br />Handle 0x0035, DMI type 17, 28 bytes<br />Memory Device<br />     Array Handle: 0x0032<br />     Error Information Handle: Not Provided<br />     Total Width: Unknown<br />     Data Width: Unknown<br />     Size: No Module Installed<br />     Form Factor: DIMM<br />     Set: None<br />     Locator: ChannelA-DIMM1<br />     Bank Locator: BANK 1<br />     Type: Unknown<br />     Type Detail: None<br />     Speed: Unknown<br />     Manufacturer: Not Specified<br />     Serial Number: Not Specified<br />     Asset Tag: 9876543210<br />     Part Number: Not Specified<br />     Rank: Unknown<br /><br />Handle 0x0036, DMI type 17, 28 bytes<br />Memory Device<br />     Array Handle: 0x0032<br />     Error Information Handle: Not Provided<br />     Total Width: 64 bits<br />     Data Width: 64 bits<br />     <b>Size: 4096 MB</b><br />     Form Factor: SODIMM<br />     Set: None<br />     Locator: ChannelB-DIMM0<br />     Bank Locator: BANK 2<br />     <b>Type: DDR3</b><br />     Type Detail: Synchronous<br />     <b>Speed: 1333 MHz</b><br />     Manufacturer: 830B<br />     Serial Number: A74D1715<br />     Asset Tag: 9876543210<br />     Part Number: NT4GC64B8HG0NS-CG <br />     Rank: Unknown<br /><br />Handle 0x0038, DMI type 17, 28 bytes<br />Memory Device<br />     Array Handle: 0x0032<br />     Error Information Handle: Not Provided<br />     Total Width: Unknown<br />     Data Width: Unknown<br />     Size: No Module Installed<br />     Form Factor: DIMM<br />     Set: None<br />     Locator: ChannelB-DIMM1<br />     Bank Locator: BANK 3<br />     Type: Unknown<br />     Type Detail: None<br />     Speed: Unknown<br />     Manufacturer: Not Specified<br />     Serial Number: Not Specified<br />     Asset Tag: 9876543210<br />     Part Number: Not Specified<br />     Rank: Unknown</code></pre><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">You can also use lshw (among others) for this (firstly, install it; in Ubuntu: "sudo apt-get install lshw):</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo lshw -C memory</code></pre><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">It's <b>important</b> to note that Dmidecode reports system hardware information as described in the BIOS and does not scan your hardware, so in some cases the output can be wrong. Running <i>dmidecode</i> on my Dell XPS L702X non-3D laptop, the output says my system should have 4 RAM slots but in fact there are only 2 and only the 3D version of my laptop can have 4 RAM slots (and by the way, there are some Windows applications reporting the same thing), however, the command is accurate about it supporting 16 GB of RAM.</div><br /><br />Also see: <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2011/07/how-to-get-hardware-information-in.html">How To Get Hardware Information In Linux</a>

How To Find Out Maximum Supported RAM Or Number Of Available DIMM Slots In Linux

If you need a quick way to find out how much RAM your Linux system supports or to determine the number of DIMM slots available, you can use ...

+ Read more »