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 ...

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Enable TRIM On SSD (Solid-State Drives) In Ubuntu For Better Performance

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gCRPfV7gNz8/UPVkM5Ro5PI/AAAAAAAAMtg/NVO3xwQ5lOg/s1600/kingston-ssd-120gb-v200.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="kingston ssd 120gb v200" border="0" height="178" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gCRPfV7gNz8/UPVkM5Ro5PI/AAAAAAAAMtg/NVO3xwQ5lOg/s320/kingston-ssd-120gb-v200.jpg" title="kingston ssd 120gb v200" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>TRIM allows the OS to "<i>inform a solid-state drive (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006YLTY2O/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=weup-21-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B006YLTY2O">SSD</a>) which blocks of data are no longer considered in use and can be wiped internally</i>". Without using TRIM, the SSD speed decreases after a while so if you have a solid-state drive that supports TRIM, you should enable it so your SSD remains fast over time.</b></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">This isn't easy to benchmark because the performance decreases over time so you'd neet to check the SSD speed constantly for a few months to see exactly how the SSD is affected when TRIM is not enabled. But if your SSD read / write speed decreases a lot over time and you haven't enabled TRIM, this may be way.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Some articles mention using online discard</b> - enabling TRIM by adding the "discard" option to /etc/fstab -, <b>but there are many <a href="http://opensuse.14.n6.nabble.com/SSD-detection-when-creating-first-time-fstab-td3313048.html">who</a> <a href="https://patrick-nagel.net/blog/archives/337">say</a> this isn't a good idea for most solid-state drives</b> and you'll get a pretty significant performance hit when trying to delete a large number of small files. So <b>below I'll let you know how to use both of these methods: online discard (not recommended) and the recommended way: using fstrim and a cron (anacron) job.</b></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><i>Note: the instructions below have been tested in Ubuntu, but they may (most probably) work with other Linux distributions as well.</i></div><br /><a name='more'></a><b>Before enabling TRIM, you must make sure:</b><br /><ul><li>you're using the Linux Kernel 2.6.33 or newer</li><li>your SSD supports TRIM</li><li>the partition(s) are EXT4 or BTRFS<b>*</b></li></ul><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>*</b> Since not many people are using BTRFS, this post will only cover enabling TRIM on EXT4 partitions.</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>If you're unsure if your SSD supports TRIM, you can run the following command:</b></div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo hdparm -I /dev/sda | grep "TRIM supported"</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Where "<i>/dev/sda</i>" is the solid-state drive (it may be <i>/dev/sdb</i>, <i>/dev/sdc</i>, etc. for you), and the command should return something like this: "<i>Data Set Management TRIM supported (limit 8 blocks)</i>" (if there's no output, your SSD doesn't support TRIM).  If you don't know what to use here, you can get a list of hard disks and their partitions by using the following command:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo fdisk -l</code></pre><br /><br /><h2>Enable TRIM for solid-state drives (SSD) in Linux</h2><br /><h3>Using online discard (fstab) - not recommended</h3><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">If the conditions above are met, you can proceed to enable TRIM for your SSD. <b>If you want to use the online discard option (not recommended!)</b>, open <i>/etc/fstab</i> as root with a text editor:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>gksu gedit /etc/fstab</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">And add the "discard" option (separated by a comma and no space!) to the SSD partitions you want to enable TRIM for. Here's an example:</div><pre class="source-code"><code><file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass><br /># / was on /dev/sdb1 during installation<br />UUID=1cd2fc4f-7d99-4c7a-8ea7-6f9a2d5e5960 / ext4 <b>discard</b>,errors=remount-ro 0 1</code></pre><br /><br /><h3>Using a daily cron job - recommended</h3><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Using a daily cron job, the SSD trimming will occur once every day.<b> </b><br /><br /><b>To use a daily cron job</b> (so the trimming will occur once a day) <b>for TRIM</b> <b>(fstrim)</b>, open <i>/etc/cron.daily/trim</i> as root with a text editor (<i>/etc/cron.daily/trim</i> doesn't exist so this will create the file):</div><pre class="source-code"><code>gksu gedit /etc/cron.daily/trim</code></pre> and paste this:<br /><pre class="source-code"><code>#!/bin/sh<br />LOG=/var/log/trim.log<br />echo "*** $(date -R) ***" >> $LOG<br />fstrim -v / >> $LOG<br />fstrim -v /home >> $LOG</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>The last two commands in the code above perform the actual trimming</b> for the root (/) and home (/home) partition and<b> you need to edit them</b>: here, add the SSD partitions for which you want to enable the daily TRIM job (usually, you must add "/" if the root partition is on the SSD and "/home" if you've set up a separate home partition). </div><br />Before saving the file, you can <b>check if the fstrim command works:</b><br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo fstrim -v /</code></pre><br />The output should look similar to this:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>andrei@ubuntu-desktop:~$ sudo fstrim -v /<br />/: 8158715904 bytes were trimmed</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Once you've added your SSD partitions, save the file and make it executable using the following command:</b></div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo chmod +x /etc/cron.daily/trim</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Ubuntu executes the daily cron</b> (<b>we're using anacron, so even if your computer is turned off at that time, the job will still be performed later on</b>) <b>jobs at around 06:25</b> so each day after that time, you can check the <i>/var/log/trim.log</i> log file to see the <i>fstrim</i> output.</div><br /><br /><h3>For encrypted partitions</h3><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">If you're using an encrypted partition, you'll have to perform some extra steps for this to work (<b>not tested because I don't have any encrypted partitions</b>!): edit <i>/etc/default/grub</i> as root:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>gksu gedit /etc/default/grub</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">And add the following options under <i>GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""</i> (it should be around line 12 in that file):</div><pre class="source-code"><code>"allow-discards root_trim=yes"</code></pre><br />After editing the file, it should look like this:<br /><br /><pre class="source-code"><code>GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`<br />GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"<br /><b>GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="allow-discards root_trim=yes"</b></code></pre><br />Then, save the file and update GRUB:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo update-grub</code></pre><br />Now edit <i>/etc/crypttab</i> as root:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>gksu gedit /etc/crypttab</code></pre><br />And add the "discard" option for the SSD partitions, like this (example):<br /><pre class="source-code"><code>#<target name> <source device> <key file> <options><br />var UUID=01234567-89ab-cdef-0123-456789abcdef none luks,<b>discard</b></code></pre><br />And finally, run the following command:<br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo update-initramfs -u -k all</code></pre><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The above instructions (except for the encrypted partition part, which I can't test) have been tested on Ubuntu 12.10 and 13.04 (SSD: <a class="external" href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006YLTY2O/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=weup-21-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B006YLTY2O" rel="nofollow">KINGSTON SVP200S 120 GB</a>).</div><br /><br />References / further reading:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM</a></li><li><a href="http://wiki.debian.org/SSDoptimization">http://wiki.debian.org/SSDoptimization</a></li><li><a href="http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/SSD/TRIM">http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/SSD/TRIM</a> (German)</li><li><a href="http://opensuse.14.n6.nabble.com/SSD-detection-when-creating-first-time-fstab-td3313048.html">http://opensuse.14.n6.nabble.com/SSD-detection-when-creating-first-time-fstab-td3313048.html </a></li><li><a href="https://patrick-nagel.net/blog/archives/337">https://patrick-nagel.net/blog/archives/337</a></li></ul>

Enable TRIM On SSD (Solid-State Drives) In Ubuntu For Better Performance

TRIM allows the OS to " inform a solid-state drive ( SSD ) which blocks of data are no longer considered in use and can be wiped intern...

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Ubuntu: LightDM Black Screen When Using SSD Workaround

<div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Some Ubuntu <a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/227385/xubuntu-lightdm-shows-blank-screen-half-the-time">users</a> <a href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lightdm/+bug/1066410">are</a> reporting LightDM errors when using a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007R67FNA/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=weup07-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B007R67FNA">SSD</a>: about half the time when starting the computer, LightDM</b> (the default Ubuntu display manager) <b>doesn't load correctly</b> and only a black screen and a blinking command line cursor shows up. The issue isn't limited to those who are using a SSD, but it's a lot more frequent when booting Ubuntu from a solid-state drive.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I too am experiencing this issue with Ubuntu 12.10 (not tested on older Ubuntu versions because I didn't have a SSD when I was using 12.04) and I've found <b>two possible workarounds which have worked for me so I thought I'd share them with you, in case you're experiencing the same issue</b>.</div><br /><a name='more'></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">It seems that the black screen with only a blinking cursor (though sometimes I've also seen the "System is running in low-graphics mode" error) issue occurs due to a race condition with LightDM and without any tweaks, the only way to load the desktop was to either switch to a tty (CTRL + ALT + F1), login and then restart Lightdm using the "sudo service lightdm restart" command or restart the computer. So here are two possible workarounds:</div><br /><br /><br /><b>1. Start LightDM with a delay</b><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img.netupd8.com/lightdm-ubuntu12.10.png"><img alt="LightDM" src="http://img.netupd8.com/lightdm-ubuntu12.10_thumb.png" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">One way around this is to start LightDM with a delay. My system, with Ubuntu 12.10 64bit installed on a SSD boots in ~14 seconds so adding a 2 second delay isn't much, however, for some, a larger delay might be needed (it depends on the system / SSD). This isn't ideal but it's definitely better than having to manually start LightDM or restart the computer. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I must also mention that from what I've read, this workaround doesn't always work, meaning that if before using it, LightDM wouldn't start 50% of the time, using this workaround doesn't necessary mean it will work 100% of the time. Since I've applied this tweak, LightDM has worked every time for me so this probably depends on the hardware / SSD and how fast the system boots.</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>To start LightDM with a delay, edit the <i>/etc/init/lightdm.conf</i> file as root with a text editor (I'll be using Gedit below):</b></div><pre class="linux-code"><code>gksu gedit /etc/init/lightdm.conf</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">And near the end of the file (line 47 for me under Ubuntu 12.10 with LightDM 1.4.0-0ubuntu2), <b>above "exec lightdm", add the following line and then save the file:</b></div><pre class="source-code"><code> sleep 2</code></pre><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">"2" is the number of seconds used to delay starting LightDM. Like I was saying above, "2" was enough for me, but depending on your system, you might need to add a higher value.</div><br />This is how the end of the <i>/etc/init/lightdm.conf</i> file should look like after editing it:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img.netupd8.com/lightdm.conf.png"><img alt="lightdm.conf delay" src="http://img.netupd8.com/lightdm.conf_thumb.png" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><b>2. Use GDM instead of LightDM</b><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img.netupd8.com/gdm-ubuntu12.10.png"><img alt="GDM" src="http://img.netupd8.com/gdm-ubuntu12.10_thumb.png" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">The issue did not occur for me while using GDM and booting Ubuntu from a SSD, so if you don't want to add a delay to LightDM, you can install and use GDM instead.</div><br /><b>To install GDM in Ubuntu, use the following command:</b><br /><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo apt-get install gdm</code></pre><br />Or install it via Synaptic, Software Center, etc.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>When installing GDM, you'll be prompted to select the display manager: here, select GDM instead of LightDM.</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">If GDM was already installed but you were using LightDM, you can switch to GDM by using the following command:</div><pre class="linux-code"><code>sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm</code></pre><br />And then select GDM when prompted.<br /><br />More about switching between LightDM, GDM, etc. in Ubuntu, <a href="http://www.webupd8.org/2011/07/how-to-switch-between-gdm-lightdm-or.html" title="How To Switch Between GDM, LightDM Or KDM In Ubuntu">HERE</a>.

Ubuntu: LightDM Black Screen When Using SSD Workaround

Some Ubuntu users are reporting LightDM errors when using a SSD : about half the time when starting the computer, LightDM (the default Ub...

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