Morgue Folders in My Profile Folder

[skuddle]

Just curious...

I have a lot of "nryquiiu.default\storage\default\https+++..." folders in my Profiles folder, all ending with "morgue". What are these and can any of them be deleted without affecting Firefox?

[therube]

(Not really knowing what any of that [to me] crap in there is for, I would think anything in there could be deleted without issue.
That said, could be that a particular site relies of that data - for something?)

[LIMPET235]

Hi skuddle,
Instead of straight out deleting any "unknown" files, it's best to just re-name them as a precaution.
Try > nnxx_nryquiiu.default\storage\default\https+++ etc., etc.

Hopefully, nothing bad will happen but who knows?
Just go about your "normal" routine & see what occurs or if anything complains.

[skuddle]

The "morgue" files are in:

c:\users\me\appdata\roaming\mozilla\firefox\profiles

along with more than 3,300 other files.

The majority of them are in subfolders of the previously named path and are named:

"nryxxxxx.backup\storage\default\yyyy\cache\morgue

where "nryxxxxx" is my profile ID and "yyyy" is the name of a URL that I visited. Most of them have to do with my failed attempts to create a Youtube channel but with over 3,300 other files I don't particularly care to delete them one-by-one. I am tempted to delete all of them but I don't want to until I know their significance and purpose.

If you know the significance and purpose of these files, or if this information helps you help me, please let me know.

[LIMPET235]

Tried re-naming the subfolder?

I tried searching on the official support site but no results found re; Morgue files.

Maybe one of the experts can explain?

[DanRaisch]

Sounds more like something added to the profile by an extension or third party program rather than anything native to Firefox.

[LIMPET235]

Here's the only reference I can find to "morgue files" by Mo_D on these fora in an old thread.
> http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... #p14745038

Weird stuff.

There is an very old bugzilla thread as well.
" Opened 6 years ago Closed 6 years ago."

> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1165119

[skuddle]

@Limpet235
There are 84 subfolders named "morgue".

I read through the link you sent and it didn't make any sense to me (not that anything to do with programming does make sense to me...)

Also, they are not morgue files, they are morgue folders. I'll continue to search the 'net for additional information.

@DanRaisch
I've already tried starting Firefox in the Safe mode and still cannot create a Youtube channel.
And I've tried using Internet Explorer 11 with the same results, and I've tried on three separate computers.

[morat]

There are some comments about morgue folders in the source.

Reference
http://searchfox.org/mozilla-release/se ... Parent.cpp

You need to learn C++ if you want to know about such backend details.

[LIMPET235]

Thank you morat.
Much appreciated for the "missing/hard to find" info.



[edit]
Found another forum where Chris Ilias posted a tad more info....
ref; > http://readlist.com/lists/lists.mozilla ... 84739.html
Subject: Re: Storage and Morgue
Group: Mozilla-support-firefox
From: Chris Ilias
Date: 9 Dec 2020

One link re; "Service Worker" from that above link.
> https://developers.google.com/web/funda ... ce-workers
[/edit]

Dunno if it will help though.
Might be best to just leave all the sub/folders alone.

[skuddle]

@Limpet235

I went to the first link and found that I should enable "Clear offline data" (or some such) in my Clear Recent History.

That did it. For better or worse, no more hundreds of morgue folders. Thank you for providing me with that link!

Then I went to the second link and was immediately swamped by all the stuff there! Anyways, thanks again. I'll see how it works out.

[LIMPET235]

You're welcome...



BUT, I've read somewhere, that is best just leave them as they are/may be needed.

[spage]

There is an very old bugzilla thread as well.
" Opened 6 years ago Closed 6 years ago."

> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1165119

That bug is that Firefox briefly created the morgue/ folder structure outside each website's cache/ folder. There's Firefox code in dom/quota/ActorsParent.cpp to clean these wrong directories out (I don't have any). However, the myprofile/storage/default/https+++blah.somesite.com/cache/morgue folders seem intentional though undocumented.

dom/cache/FileUtils.cpp has a lot of functions to work with "body" files. It doesn't explain why Firefox puts them in a folder named morgue/, but says

Code: Select all

  // body files are stored in a directory structure like:
  //  /morgue/01/{01fdddb2-884d-4c3d-95ba-0c8062f6c325}.final

and justifies the complicated structure with the comment

Code: Select all

  // Some file systems have poor performance when there are too many files
  // in a single directory.  Mitigate this issue by spreading the body
  // files out into sub-directories.  We use the last byte of the ID for
  // the name of the sub-directory.
  

One way to get rid of https+++blah.somesite.com/cache/morgue is to visit blah.somesite.com, click the padlock icon near the location field, and choose "Clear cookies and site data ....". This will delete cookies so the site won't know who you are or what you've been doing, but that's usually a win anway. Immediately close the tab.

The brute force approach : in a Linux terminal I just changed directory into myprofile/storage/default directory and ran

Code: Select all

rm -r */cache/morgue

to recursively remove all this crud for dozens of sites at once, and it shrank from 225 MB to 71 MB. ( Don't enter terminal commands if you don't understand them, and this is potentially risky even if you type it correctly; but a cache is supposed to be a local save of information that would take time and effort to rebuild, e,g, downloadable fonts for a site, so it should not be required.)

Next mystery is why do I have 500 MB of similar crud in myprofile/storage/archives/0/ organized by date?

It is very unfortunate that Mozilla doesn't document Firefox's sprawling directory structure .

[DanRaisch]

Locking due to the age of the original posts.