Query about parasitic firefox file

[Bret Busby]

The problem appears to be solved.

After having had firefox cause problems yet again, using the
javascript.enabled = true, then it eating all the free space, and then
me deleting the *.wal file in /home/me/.firefox/<sessionid ?>/*.wal,
leading to a firefox crash when I shutdown firefox, and it crashing
another application, with all of that freeing up the free space that
was eaten by the firefox pacman component, and then, as mentioned in
the thread relating to unwritable partitions, I moved some data out of
the partition, and, freed up more space, at present having about 5.6GB
of free space, I tried the solution to the firefox pacman problem,
that my wife had suggested, and, the way that I implemented it,
appears to work.

At present, on this computer, I am only using firefox to access web
sites where I need to have javascript enabled (as the mozilla
developers/saboteurs decided that firefox should no  longer be as
functional as it was, it is now only useful for accessing a single web
site at a time).

So, I open a New Private Window, then, go to about.config, within that
browser window, toggle the javascript.enabled value to true, then open
a new tab within that window, for the web site that requires
javascript to be enabled, do what I need to do at that web site, then,
close that tab, then toggle the javascript.enabled value back to
false, then close that window.

Then, in checking the .wal file, it shows as being about 460kB in
size, rather than the previous > 1GB in size.

My wife;s suggestion involved the reasoning that, as the use of a
Private Window involves deleting the history data when the Private
Window is closed, or, otherwise not saving the history data, it will
not leave anything in the .wal file, from the javascript session.

As I have said, it appears to work.

Some time, when I have upgraded this OS installation to UbuntuMATE
18.04, I will try to install an earlier version of 16.04, that I have
on a DVD, on the HDD, so that I do not have two installations of the
same OS version, and, so that I will have the version of firefox that
is on the DVD, so I can have a functional version of firefox, instead
of this IE3 kind of version of firefox, that is firefox v >56.

-- 
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..............

"So once you do know what the question actually is,
 you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
 Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
 "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
 A Trilogy In Four Parts",
 written by Douglas Adams,
 published by Pan Books, 1992

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