Just because disk space is available... (Linux)

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taylorkh
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Joined: August 15th, 2011, 8:26 am

Just because disk space is available... (Linux)

Post by taylorkh »

Does Firefox need to use it?

CentOS Linux (Red Hat Enterprise Linux clone) finally upgraded to Firefox 60.1.0esr. Other than obsoleting half of my addons, the only issue I have seen so far (about 15 minutes usage) is that the size of my profile has almost doubled. I performed my nightly backup before upgrading. The backed up profile is 76.9 MB (bad enough). The current profile takes up 147.6 MB. The biggest chunk seems to be in the extensions subdirectory.

Is this to be expected or can Firefox be thinned out? Does vacuuming still work?

TIA,

Ken
Last edited by DanRaisch on July 12th, 2018, 6:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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malliz
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Re: Just because disk space is available...

Post by malliz »

How much disk space do you have free?
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taylorkh
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Re: Just because disk space is available...

Post by taylorkh »

Thanks malliz,

I have plenty of disk space - but it is not free. In the case of my main Firefox profiles - they is on high cost performance pcie solid state storage. I have done some investigation and I find that 52 MB of the bloat is in 98 language packs for which I have no need.

On my first profile I went through Tools; Add-ons Manager; Languages and deleted them one by one. That SUCKED. I have many profiles on many machines (physical and virtual) and deleting this crap one language at a time was not acceptable. Nor was wasting 52 MB per profile. Using my typical big hammer approach to problem solving I deleted all of the language pack files from another profile. The extraneous languages SEEM not to be coming back. That is still not a pleasant option - and having to remember to remove this crap every time I create a new profile.

I have launched my special profile which I use only to access a couple of financial web sites. The language packs have still not returned.

It would be nice if the user was OFFERED the option of installing languages of interest.

Ken
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James
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Re: Just because disk space is available... (Linux)

Post by James »

The official Firefox builds for Linux from mozilla.org or www.mozilla.org/firefox/all does not come with multiple language packs. Anybody who wants to have a language pack or two besides the locale being used can install it from https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/language-tools/ .. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/us ... guage-pack

The Language packs you have is from CentOS packages with the Firefox install as perhaps you may be able to uninstall the language packs in the package manager.
taylorkh
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Joined: August 15th, 2011, 8:26 am

Re: Just because disk space is available... (Linux)

Post by taylorkh »

Thank you James,

This smells like a CentOS (or the upstream vendor Red Hat) related issue. I examined Firefox 60.0.1 on Ubuntu Mate 18.04 Linux. NO language packs. On the other hand, when I upgrade Firefox on a CentOS machine the language packs are NOT installed by the upgrade. They appear the first time I launch Firefox. There must be something in the CentOS configuration which causes this to happen. I will ask on the CentOS forums. At least the darned things do not seem to come back. I have deleted almost a gigabyte of them this morning as I have been updating my various machines and special purpose profiles.

Thanks again,

Ken
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Grumpus
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Re: Just because disk space is available... (Linux)

Post by Grumpus »

If memory serves with Fedora in trying to remove language packs there were a number of dependencies which, if you tried to remove them through the software management a number of other files would be listed for removal. Internally seemed to be the only way to make this happen and in some cases would cause other software package issues when updates were available. If they are still using the delta method for the updates you may need to be careful of similar dependencies which in the past caused a double download of an update.
Example: removing specific search engines after a new Firefox install . When a new update of Firefox was attempted the normal 45 or so Mb file would be downloaded twice due to the dependencies.
It's been a year or two since I had Fedora installed so this may have changed but the dependencies have to be watched.
All the Linux OSs have similar issues.
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taylorkh
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Re: Just because disk space is available... (Linux)

Post by taylorkh »

Thanks Grumpus,

I believe the offending files are Firefox specific. They are located in ~/.mozilla/firefox/profilename/extensions/ They are names such as "langpack-ach@firefox.mozilla.org.xpi" and similar. As I stated earlier they do not appear when the Firefox package is installed (by yum in the case of CentOS). They appear after the first run of Firefox.

I know that Ubuntu has a whole boat load of language pack crap which installs during the installation process. It is not included on the install media, it has to be downloaded each time an install is made. I have not experienced that with CentOS. I never investigated language support in CentOS.

For what it might be worth, but no to me :-) Firefox does not install these language files on Windoze 7.

Ken
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Grumpus
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Re: Just because disk space is available... (Linux)

Post by Grumpus »

@taylorkh - Never saw that happen on any Linux distro where it wasn't separate from Firefox install.
The CentOS is a modified (third party) version so it could be something they did.
Have you set your locale? It may be a trigger which picks up on the locale, though doubtful, which causes the transfer but the question is where are the files coming from?
It could come from the repos but it is unlikely it is something loaded by installing Firefox unless modified for the distro.
If you haven't set your locale?
Type in a terminal: iw reg get
This should give you your 2 letter country abbreviation, if it shows 00 it is not set.
If it is not set, using sudo or gksudo and a text editor open /etc/default/crda
Example: edit regdomain to REGDOMAIN=US(or two letters in caps for your country)
Make sure you use the proper two letters for your country

You should be able to delete any of those language packs under the profile which you do not use.
They may also be located in the /usr/lib/firefox folder deeper in the system or where ever they are found using your file manager under admin levels.
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