Portable: Some advanced options

Users and developers helping users with generic and technical Pale Moon issues on all operating systems.

Moderator: trava90

Forum rules
This board is for technical/general usage questions and troubleshooting for the Pale Moon browser only.
Technical issues and questions not related to the Pale Moon browser should be posted in other boards!
Please keep off-topic and general discussion out of this board, thank you!
User avatar
Moonchild
Pale Moon guru
Pale Moon guru
Posts: 35404
Joined: 2011-08-28, 17:27
Location: Motala, SE
Contact:

Portable: Some advanced options

Unread post by Moonchild » 2014-02-07, 21:20

Some advanced options for using the Portable browser.
Note that these kind of changes are at your own risk and I will not provide support for edited versions in most cases.

Advanced options

Note that any edits to palemoon-portable.ini will be overwritten if you install a new version of the portable on top of it. To prevent losing your edits, save the .ini file as user.ini in the Pale Moon portable folder. This file will take precedence over palemoon-portable.ini. (meaning: if user.ini is found, palemoon-portable.ini will be ignored. it has to be a full copy of the palemoon-portable.ini file with your edits).
If you do this, also check to see if anything specific has changed in the new palemoon-portable.ini since the portable framework, script and .ini may see some changes from time to time to improve functionality.

If you run Pale Moon Portable from your hard disk (to keep it self-contained)
You may want to enable the disk cache and xul cache for better performance. Be aware that the Portable version will not provide file associations unless you specifically make them, yourself.

To enable caching, find the appropriate section in Palemoon-Portable.ini, under "Global Preferences":

;(enable cache)
browser.cache.disk.enable=false --> Change this to "true"


By default, these settings will store the disk cache as a subdirectory of your profile called Cache.
If you prefer to have the cache in a different directory instead, change the following:

;(cache directory)
browser.cache.disk.parent_directory=%MOZ_PROFILE_PATH%|\\"


to a directory of your choice, for example:

browser.cache.disk.parent_directory=c:\palemoon-cache|\\"

If you want to use Pale Moon portable to test
For example to test a different version of Pale Moon while you already have one installed (e.g. new version check, check for compatibilities of add-ons with a major release, etc.) and want to run multiple different versions at the same time, find the following lines in palemoon-portable.ini:

[Environment]
;(multiple istances)
;MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1


and remove the semicolon in front of MOZ_NO_REMOTE
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
"Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future." -- Native American proverb
"Linux makes everything difficult." -- Lyceus Anubite

TELVM

Re: Some advanced options

Unread post by TELVM » 2014-02-15, 15:05

A question on caching if you don't mind.

What would be the difference, if any, between storing the cache in a ramdisk:

browser.cache.disk.enable = true
browser.cache.disk.parent_directory = R:\PaleMoon\Cache
<--- (where R: is a ramdisk)


... and browsing without any disk cache at all, only memory cache, something like this:

browser.cache.disk.enable = false

browser.cache.memory.enable = true
browser.cache.memory.capacity = 1048576
browser.cache.memory.max_entry_size = 51200


As long as RAM is not powered off, can memory caching replace disk caching, or will I miss something by not using disk cache?

User avatar
Moonchild
Pale Moon guru
Pale Moon guru
Posts: 35404
Joined: 2011-08-28, 17:27
Location: Motala, SE
Contact:

Re: Some advanced options

Unread post by Moonchild » 2014-02-15, 15:09

Memory cache and disk cache have two completely different functions and memory cache cannot and will not replace disk cache because of the different purpose they serve. Setting memory cache capacity to a very high number will not help, as it won't be used.
See also: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.cache.memory.capacity
"Sometimes, the best way to get what you want is to be a good person." -- Louis Rossmann
"Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past; wisdom is of the future." -- Native American proverb
"Linux makes everything difficult." -- Lyceus Anubite

TELVM

Re: Some advanced options

Unread post by TELVM » 2014-02-15, 20:29

Ouch, so the memory cache only deals with "decoded images, messages, and chrome".

I've been monitoring about:cache and you're right, the memory cache storage in use never seems to grow above ~125,000 KiB no matter what I try.

Locked