home/user/.moonchild productions/pale moon/be8b85qk.default/ consumes too much backup space

[AA BB]

Even though I clear my PM browser cache BEFORE every /home/username backup,
over 60% of my back up is consumed by files in
home/username/.moonchild productions/pale moon/be8b85qk.default/

How can I get rid of this ?
Are you are you saving every site I ever visited using PaleMoon ?

[Moonchild]

Depending on what sites you visit they may also store considerable amounts of data, so might extensions you are using.

Check the subdirectories "extension-data" and "storage" in your profile.

[AA BB]

home/$USER/.moonchild productions/pale moon/ is 21.1 MB total ...and growing daily

Which of these can I delete ???

/storage is 6.5 MB
/extensions is 45 KB (trivial)

files :
places.sqlite 10.5 MB
webappsstore.sqlite 1.1 MB
cookies.sqlite 1.1 MB
cookies.sqlite-wal 0.5 MB

[AA BB]

In addition to the 21.6 MB of data PaleMoon consumes in
home/$USER/.moonchild productions/pale moon/

It is also consuming another 22 MB in /home/$USER/.cache/moonchild productions/pale moon/

Over 43.7 MB is over 77%% of my available /home space ... Why is PaleMoon sucking up so much disk space ??

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Are you seriously bitching about sub-100 meg numbers in the year 2020? The hell you using? A 128 meg flash drive for your home directory? What the fuck man.

RESOLVED INVALID

[vannilla]

Off-topic:
21MB is the size of modern websites. For a directory it's nothing by modern standards.

[Moonchild]

Over 43.7 MB is over 77%% of my available /home space ...

You -really- need to re-think in what decade you're living if you are only giving /home what.. 64MB to store your data?
I suggest you re-home your /home to something with considerably more space. Give it a few GB of room.

Also, you have to understand that if you only have a very small amount of space for Pale Moon to store its web cache in, it will severely impact your browsing experience. Running out of space for the profile may also cause data corruption and will prevent history and bookmarks from working properly. it may even break connectivity as a whole.

[AA BB]

If I delete some of the large files in /home/$USER/.cache/moonchild productions/pale moon/ what happens ?

[therube]

(I believe that is you /cache/ directory, so should not be an issue - but I'm not really familiar with Linux directory structures & just where things are stored in Linux.)


You can change where your /cache/ directory is stored, so you can move it elsewhere, browser.cache.disk.parent_directory.

[AA BB]

Also, you have to understand that if you only have a very small amount of space for Pale Moon to store its web cache in, it will severely impact your browsing experience. Running out of space for the profile may also cause data corruption and will prevent history and bookmarks from working properly. it may even break connectivity as a whole

My /home backup two weeks ago indicates PM consumed less than 20 MB total; and since I first installed PM, it has never shown any signs of not working .
PM's consumption of disk space rapidly grows over time. It seems to be saving every page visited, even one-time visits that I never returned to.

Why do I need to backup every web page I visit ?

[AA BB]

How do I tell PM to use a cache directory that I specify, rather than the default PM directories it is currently using in my /home ?

[New Tobin Paradigm]

You don't.

[therube]

about:config, (context-menu) New -> String
Name, browser.cache.disk.parent_directory
Value, /tmp/PM (or whatever works for you)

Restart PM.

That should create a new cache directory at, /tmp/PM/.

Or you could disable your cache entirely.


More information about your situation might even bring out better answers.


(Oh, & 20 MB, these days, is svelte, in the scheme of things.)

[Moonchild]

Relocating the cache still won't solve the problem that the profile itself will need more space than what it is given by the user. At most it will temporarily alleviate it.
Websites will want to use local storage in the browser to operate, for example. The various databases maintained by the browser itself will also need room to work in. These simply (by design) favor speed over space and will e.g. pre-allocate several MB chunks to reduce filesystem overhead when new data would be stored. No that's not configurable, it's part of the database and db engine design.

[AA BB]

PM users need a realistic solution to avoid backing up tons of large files ( JPG , PNG, sql etc.) stored in /home/$user
I don`t dispute that these files may improve PM performance, but I see no reason why they should be in my backup.
I always use TOOLS > PREFERENCES > ADVANCED > NETWORK "clear now" button before doing backups, and this helps, BUT still many large PM files remain

When PM was first installed, these additional files were not present, and PM had no trouble functioning, so it's hard to believe PM 'needs' these files in order to function properly.

All that`s really needed is for the TOOLS >...> NETWORK "clear now" button to clear out ALL stuff except for the user`s bookmarks and saved passwords.

[New Tobin Paradigm]

Backups should exclude the cache directories if that is important to people. But that doesn't have anything to do with your 1996-era disk space conserns for an operational profile.

For that, I reiterate the following:

RESOLVED INVALID

[AA BB]

about:config, (context-menu) New -> String
Name, browser.cache.disk.parent_directory
Value, /tmp/PM (or whatever works for you)

Thanks...
I did the above and verified that PM is using the directory I created.
?? NOW what can I delete from /home/$USER/.moonchild productions/pale moon/

[Moonchild]

You can delete nothing.
Everything in the profile is useful.

Also, you're still not taking to heart what I said in my previous post. It will grow with use and that will soon exceed your alotted 64 MB of /home.
You really need to use a better setup.

[Trapper]

This thread has all the earmarks of a Rod Serling Twilight Zone production... facinating but weird as hell.

I'm still wondering why the OP doggedly refuses to explain * WHY * he desperately needs to limit his backup space to 64 MB (even though it's been asked many times).

This is just so weird. Rod Serling would be proud !

[AA BB]

What about /home/D6204/.cache/moonchild productions/pale moon/be8b85qk.default/

can I delete it ?? its contents are similar to the new PM directory I created .