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vcmota
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 29, 2017 10:18 pm    Post subject: [SOLVED] Firefox: is it possible to export/import a config Reply with quote

I have been using gentoo for some time now and the one thing that bothers me a lot is how firefox performs terribly on all my physical installs. Although it is true that those machines are low end hardware, one with more than five years, the Firefox performance is sufficiently bad for me to state that it cannot be just the hardware, in fact it looks like it is almost solely the software, Firefox in this case. In this five years old laptop I had previously installed fedora, and the firefox performance was simply much better, it was never an issue really. In fact, now that with gentoo I am able to make amazingly minimal while still perfectly functional installs, I was expecting to have a superior performance everywhere, and this is not true specifically for Firefox: the browser starts to lose responsiveness progressively with time, to the point that, after opened for a few hours, maybe even less time, I just have to "killall -9 Firefox" and restart it. That behavior gets worse as I open more tabs, but it happens even when just a few tabs are opened, so number of tabs is clearly not the problem here. Also, I noticed that the RAM memory consumption increases tremendously with time, but I have observed this also in another distros and it still does not make it loses responsiveness (I am sure of that at least for fedora, lubuntu and debian).

I still have fedora in one of my laptops with firefox installed. I leave it open for DAYS, eventually weeks, with several tabs opened, sometimes dozens of them, and it is still fluid and comfortable to use, without the need to restart firefox. So my question is: it is possible to generate a file containing all the settings from firefox (from my fedora physical install) and export it to another machine (in this case to my gentoo physical installs)? I managed to slightly improve the performance of firefox in gentoo by changing some default options, so I guess that could be the path to happiness here...

For completeness:

Code:

Portage 2.3.13 (python 3.5.4-final-0, hardened/linux/amd64/selinux, gcc-6.4.0, glibc-2.25-r9, 4.12.12-gentoo x86_64)
=================================================================
System uname: Linux-4.12.12-gentoo-x86_64-Intel-R-_Core-TM-_i7-3612QM_CPU_@_2.10GHz-with-gentoo-2.4.1
KiB Mem:     8042496 total,   6504364 free
KiB Swap:          0 total,         0 free
Timestamp of repository gentoo: Wed, 29 Nov 2017 17:30:01 +0000
Head commit of repository gentoo: 20babe885d35e274b4a2d56ff65fed02e4d7d85a
sh bash 4.3_p48-r1
ld GNU ld (Gentoo 2.29.1 p3) 2.29.1
app-shells/bash:          4.3_p48-r1::gentoo
dev-java/java-config:     2.2.0-r3::gentoo
dev-lang/perl:            5.24.3::gentoo
dev-lang/python:          2.7.14::gentoo, 3.5.4::gentoo
dev-util/cmake:           3.8.2::gentoo
dev-util/pkgconfig:       0.29.2::gentoo
sys-apps/baselayout:      2.4.1-r2::gentoo
sys-apps/openrc:          0.34.10::gentoo
sys-apps/sandbox:         2.10-r4::gentoo
sys-devel/autoconf:       2.13::gentoo, 2.69::gentoo
sys-devel/automake:       1.15.1-r1::gentoo
sys-devel/binutils:       2.29.1-r1::gentoo
sys-devel/gcc:            6.4.0::gentoo
sys-devel/gcc-config:     1.8-r1::gentoo
sys-devel/libtool:        2.4.6-r3::gentoo
sys-devel/make:           4.2.1::gentoo
sys-kernel/linux-headers: 4.4::gentoo (virtual/os-headers)
sys-libs/glibc:           2.25-r9::gentoo
Repositories:

gentoo
    location: /usr/portage
    sync-type: rsync
    sync-uri: rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage
    priority: -1000
    sync-rsync-extra-opts:

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA"
CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=native -O2"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/lib64/libreoffice/program/sofficerc /usr/share/gnupg/qualified.txt"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/dconf /etc/env.d /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/language.dat.d /etc/texmf/language.def.d /etc/texmf/updmap.d /etc/texmf/web2c"
CXXFLAGS="-march=native -O2"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FCFLAGS="-O2 -pipe"
FEATURES="assume-digests binpkg-logs config-protect-if-modified distlocks ebuild-locks fixlafiles merge-sync multilib-strict news nostrip parallel-fetch preserve-libs protect-owned sandbox selinux sesandbox sfperms strict unknown-features-warn unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch userpriv usersandbox usersync xattr"
FFLAGS="-O2 -pipe"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://gentoo.c3sl.ufpr.br/gentoo/ rsync://gentoo.c3sl.ufpr.br/gentoo/ http://gentoo.c3sl.ufpr.br/"
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--as-needed"
MAKEOPTS="-j5"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --omit-dir-times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --human-readable --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages --exclude=/.git"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
USE="X acl alsa amd64 berkdb bzip2 cli consolekit cracklib crypt cxx dbus dri fortran gdbm hardened iconv ipv6 justify lapack modules multilib ncurses nls nptl open_perms openmp pam pcre pie policykit pulseaudio readline savedconfig seccomp selinux session ssl ssp tcpd threads udev udisks unconfined unicode urandom xattr xtpax zlib" ABI_X86="64" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" APACHE2_MODULES="authn_core authz_core socache_shmcb unixd actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache cgi cgid dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" CALLIGRA_FEATURES="kexi words flow plan sheets stage tables krita karbon braindump author" COLLECTD_PLUGINS="df interface irq load memory rrdtool swap syslog" CPU_FLAGS_X86="mmx sse sse2 mmxext" ELIBC="glibc" GPSD_PROTOCOLS="ashtech aivdm earthmate evermore fv18 garmin garmintxt gpsclock isync itrax mtk3301 nmea ntrip navcom oceanserver oldstyle oncore rtcm104v2 rtcm104v3 sirf skytraq superstar2 timing tsip tripmate tnt ublox ubx" INPUT_DEVICES="libinput keyboard mouse" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LIBREOFFICE_EXTENSIONS="presenter-console presenter-minimizer" OFFICE_IMPLEMENTATION="libreoffice" PHP_TARGETS="php5-6 php7-0" POSTGRES_TARGETS="postgres9_5" PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET="python3_5" PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_5" RUBY_TARGETS="ruby22" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="nouveau radeon" XTABLES_ADDONS="quota2 psd pknock lscan length2 ipv4options ipset ipp2p iface geoip fuzzy condition tee tarpit sysrq steal rawnat logmark ipmark dhcpmac delude chaos account"
Unset:  CC, CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, CXX, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, PORTAGE_BUNZIP2_COMMAND, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS


and

Code:

mossadegh ~ # cat /etc/portage/package.use/firefox
www-client/firefox dbus hardened hwaccel jack jemalloc nsplugin selinux system-sqlite



Thank you all!


Last edited by vcmota on Wed Dec 06, 2017 9:27 pm; edited 1 time in total
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NeddySeagoon
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 29, 2017 10:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

vcmota,

If Fedora ship Firefox with Firefox branding, they do not build it themselves. That would be illegal.
If you want to build and distribute binary Firefox, the Firefox branding must be disabled. The USE=bindist does that in Gentoo.

firefox/firefox-52.5.0.ebuild:
        if ! use bindist; then
                einfo
                elog "You are enabling official branding. You may not redistribute this build"
                elog "to any users on your network or the internet. Doing so puts yourself into"
                elog "a legal problem with Mozilla Foundation"
                elog "You can disable it by emerging ${PN} _with_ the bindist USE-flag"
        fi


It follows that for Fedora to ship Firefox with Firefox branding, they are shipping one of the Mozilla builds.

Its OK to build Firefox with the Firefox branding for yourself.

On Gentoo, try www-client/firefox-bin. That downloads and installs the Firefox binary from the Mozilla builds.
If you use the same version as Fedora, you get identical code, in Firefox anyway.
Your libraries may differ from Fedora.

-- edit --

You run Fedora with hardened and selinux ?
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NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.
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vcmota
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 29, 2017 11:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thank you NeddySeagon for your reply!

Quote:

You run Fedora with hardened and selinux ?


Yes, all my gentoo installs uses both hardened and selinux, although I haven't yet configured selinux properly.

Quote:

On Gentoo, try www-client/firefox-bin. That downloads and installs the Firefox binary from the Mozilla builds.


Ok, I will give it a try. Is it possible to have both on the system simultaneously? Thank you again!
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NeddySeagoon
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 29, 2017 11:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

vcmota,

Firefox and Firefox bin are not slotted, so cannot be installed at the same time.
The ebuilds have mutual blockers.

You can cheat a little by making a binary package of your existing firefox.
This allows you to reinstall it without rebuilding it.

Read about quickpkg and emerge -K. quickpkg is not perfect. Its better to save binaries of things you might want to reinstall in a hurry at build time.
There is a FEATURE for that.

Both hardened and selinux have a performance overhead.
If you don't have hardened and selinux on Fedora, it may have a performance advantage as it won't do all the checking that hardened and selinux impose.
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NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.
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vcmota
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 30, 2017 9:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thank you again NeddySeagoon. I just noticed you have asked one thing and I have answered another one. I do not use any hardened kernel feature in fedora, simple because I have no idea of how to do that. As far as I can tell I would have to recompile the kernel for that any such feature to be effective, and I guess that would be a mess for a binary distro. But I do have selinux installed in Fedora, although I never properly configured the thing.

Your reply caught my attention to the inherent performance reduction of using a hardened/selinux setup, which made me a little less frustrated with the horrible firefox performance on my low end hardware. In fact it now feels that it was something to be expected. So I unmerged Firefox and installed Firefox-bin yesterday. I leave it open for about 6 hours with something like 10 tabs and the performance reduction was also huge. Although it felt a little better than the compiled version, it is still unsatisfying. So I was about to try midori, since it is reputed as a lightweight browser and I already tried it in fedora, but it is not stable for amd64, so I will go for something more "radical" which is Surf. I am using the suckless tools for a while and I am enjoying them a lot, so I guess its wort to try it.

Regarding selinux, is there a chance that the performance reduction I am experiencing would be because I simply have selinux fully installed, including all kernel settings, but still did not configure it as described in here?

Thank you again!
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NeddySeagoon
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 30, 2017 9:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

vcmota,

I have never installed selinux. It does not address my thread model.
I do use hardened on servers but they don't run any GUI apps, so I don't have any Firefox with selinux/hardened experience.
I'm aware of the advertised performance hits with selinux/hardened though.

I do use firefox on low end hardware from time to time.
An Acer One from 2008 with an Inter N270 Atom and 8G SSD. That's painful on some sites.
Blocking all the ads and trackers helps.
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.
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vcmota
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 02, 2018 8:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just an update, which I guess is relevant. Since I first created this post I started to look everywhere for better browsers and at some point along the way I read that using webkit was a must for a linux browser. That lead me first into Midori, which I already knew, but as I said already it is not stable for gentoo. Than I kept looking and, via some comparison chart from slant website, I found out about Vivaldi, of which I have never heard before. Than, amazingly, I found out that it was stable in gentoo. So I installed vivaldi and, It is hard to say that without sounding exaggerated, it is the best browser experience that I remember of having in linux. And I am talking about my low end machine, not the best one! It is very responsive, it is fast, and, voila, up to now I did not notice any significant performance cap due to the usage of many tabs simultaneously, which I love to do. And above all it looks like a regular browser, its appearance and usage is very standard. Well, I am just very much impressed...
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