Firefox profiles on a tmpfs (ramdisk)?

[Jouko Orava]

> > The question is, are Ubuntu developers interested in this?
>
> No.

Understood. Would it be possible to add the Firefox startup and shutdown
script hooks into Firefox run-mozilla.sh in Ubuntu, though?

> Have you tried using libeatmydata?  The only key difference there should be
> with using tmpfs is that it effectively makes fsync() a noop.

No, libeatmydata is risky. The profile may be garbled if Firefox crashes.

Using a limited size profile and tmpfs (say, 64 MB) I can keep the profile
in memory even in low memory situations, without risking the profile
integrity. The profile is saved in exactly the state Firefox leaves it
when it closes or crashes.

If the workstation crashes, with tmpfs the changes made in the current
session are lost, and the profile reverts to the previous state.
Some users might prefer this behaviour; I do.

Using tmpfs, I can save and snapshot the active profile at any time,
for example in suspend scripts. As long as Firefox syncs changesets
to the profile files properly, the profile can be copied at any time.
With a helper, one could save the profile periodically, e.g. after
suitable periods of inactivity.

Thanks anyway,
	Jouko