alexxnica / profile-cleaner

Simple script to vacuum and reindex sqlite databases used by Firefox and by Chrome/Chromium.

Profile-cleaner

Use profile-cleaner to reduce the size of browser profiles by organizing their sqlite databases using sqlite3's vacuum and reindex functions. The term "browser" is used loosely since profile-cleaner happily works on some email clients and newsreaders too.

Supported Browsers

• Aurora
• Chromium (stable, beta, and dev)
• Conkeror
• Firefox (stable, beta, and aurora)
• Google-chrome (stable, beta, and dev)
• Heftig's version of Aurora (https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=117157)
• Icedove
• Inox (https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=198763)
• Midori
• Newsbeuter
• Palemoon
• Qupzilla
• Seamonkey
• Thunderbird
• Tor-browser

Packages by Distro

• Arch via AUR Package: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/profile-cleaner
• Chakra: in the CCR
• Debian: See instruction below
• Gentoo: See instructions below
• Mint: See instruction below
• NixOS: in the official repos
• Slackware: on slackbuilds
• Ubuntu: See instructions below
• Void: in the Void repos

Debian Users

To add the PPA (personal package archive) to your Debian (tested on squeeze) system, and to install psd, do the following as the root user:

echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/graysky/utils/ubuntu quantal main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/graysky.list
echo "deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/graysky/utils/ubuntu quantal main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/graysky.list
apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys FF7F9516
apt-get update
apt-get install profile-cleaner

Gentoo Users

To add the overlay to your Gentoo system:

layman -a laurentb
emerge profile-cleaner

Mint Users

To add the PPA (personal package archive) to your Mint system (tested on 14.1), and to install psd:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graysky/utils
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install profile-cleaner

Ubuntu Users

To add the PPA (personal package archive) to your Ubuntu (packages available for Lucid and newer) system, and to install psd:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graysky/utils
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install profile-cleaner

Other Distros

If you are interested in packaging psd for your favorite distro, please contact me.

Dependencies

• bash
• bc
• findutils
• sqlite
• parallel

Sample Output and Results Using an "Uncleaned" Firefox Profile:

Size before: 154.17 Mbytes
Size after:  99.11 Mbytes

$ profile-cleaner f

/home/facade/.mozilla/firefox/zee52krz.default/cookies.sqlite reduced by .87 Mbytes
/home/facade/.mozilla/firefox/zee52krz.default/signons.sqlite reduced by .41 Mbytes
/home/facade/.mozilla/firefox/zee52krz.default/downloads.sqlite reduced by .56 Mbytes
/home/facade/.mozilla/firefox/zee52krz.default/chromeappsstore.sqlite reduced by .03 Mbytes
/home/facade/.mozilla/firefox/zee52krz.default/urlclassifier3.sqlite reduced by 43.10 Mbytes
/home/facade/.mozilla/firefox/zee52krz.default/formhistory.sqlite reduced by .11 Mbytes
/home/facade/.mozilla/firefox/zee52krz.default/addons.sqlite reduced by 0 Mbytes
/home/facade/.mozilla/firefox/zee52krz.default/permissions.sqlite reduced by 0 Mbytes
/home/facade/.mozilla/firefox/zee52krz.default/content-prefs.sqlite reduced by 0 Mbytes
/home/facade/.mozilla/firefox/zee52krz.default/extensions.sqlite reduced by 0 Mbytes
/home/facade/.mozilla/firefox/zee52krz.default/webappsstore.sqlite reduced by 0 Mbytes
/home/facade/.mozilla/firefox/zee52krz.default/OfflineCache/index.sqlite reduced by 0 Mbytes
/home/facade/.mozilla/firefox/zee52krz.default/search.sqlite reduced by 0 Mbytes
/home/facade/.mozilla/firefox/zee52krz.default/places.sqlite reduced by 9.98 Mbytes

firefox profile reduced by 55.06 Mbytes

Speed Comparison

28-Nov-2012 Profile-cleaner has been rewritten to use GNU Parallel for processing.

Here is a contrived example cleaning 6 firefox profiles comparing the classical version of Profile-cleaner which used for loops to process profiles to the new version:

• There are a total of 312 M in the 6 "dirty" profiles.
• Test machine is an Intel 3770K @ 4.50 GHz.
• After cleaning there is a total of 213 M in the 6 "clean" profiles.

new 4.07s user 0.42s system 318% cpu 1.411 total

old 8.15s user 0.43s system 95% cpu 8.942 total

Your mileage may vary.