Another question, what should the extension Places Maintenance do? I've noticed the more I've played around with it that it doesn't seem to help at all.

BTW, I've also tried with disabling QuickJava and Classic Theme Restorer. While that made things seem faster for the first hour of my session, after that I've gotten the same intermittent hangs/slowness. So, I guess I can confirm it's not those extensions. I'd worked in safemode, but only for a short time, so this kind of confirms it wasn't the extensions since I worked through a long session.

BTW, can you explain the places wal and such? Why those would be showing up, now?

The places.sqlite-shm and places.sqlite-wal files are SQLite temp files.

wal: Write-Ahead Logging
shm: Shared Memory files

• http://www.sqlite.org/wal.html

cor-el said

The places.sqlite-shm and places.sqlite-wal files are SQLite temp files. wal: Write-Ahead Logging shm: Shared Memory files

• http://www.sqlite.org/wal.html

I was more interested in the answer to my question concerning why these files are showing up now when they weren't when you originally asked me what place files were in my folder?

I understand you have set Firefox to clear history when you closedown. Bookmarks and History are stored in the database file places.sqlite . Firefox will need to process that database file at closedown, to remove the History data.

If something goes wrong in the shutdown or subsequent startup the .shm & .wal files may sometimes get left behind. Helpdesk considers some of your problems may be related to outstanding bug 1248837 issues.

If you do have issues affecting places.sqlite that plausibly could be part of your reason for seeing other intermittent hangs.

I am not certain exactly what the places maintenance addon does. My recollection is it basically forces the standard cleanup operations of places.sqlite to be performed.

John99 said

I understand you have set Firefox to clear history when you closedown. Bookmarks and History are stored in the database file places.sqlite . Firefox will need to process that database file at closedown, to remove the History data. If something goes wrong in the shutdown or subsequent startup the .shm & .wal files may sometimes get left behind. Helpdesk considers some of your problems may be related to outstanding bug 1248837 issues. If you do have issues affecting places.sqlite that plausibly could be part of your reason for seeing other intermittent hangs. I am not certain exactly what the places maintenance addon does. My recollection is it basically forces the standard cleanup operations of places.sqlite to be performed.

Thanks. So, do you think my hangs would be corrected simply by switching my "history" privacy settings? What is the default in this regard? Currently, you have three options at the "Firefox will" section which include: Remember history, never remember history and use custom settings for history, which is what mine is currently set at. I'd expirmented with one of these yesterday (forgot which one, honestly, I think it was Remember history), but that didn't seem to fix anything.

"Use custom settings for history" allows to access the current history and cookie settings for inspection and modification. Selecting "Use custom settings for history" doesn't make any changes to history and cookie settings. Firefox will keep showing "Use custom settings for history" as an indication that at least one of the history and cookie settings is not the default to make you aware that changes were made.

This is more likely related to the "Clear history when Firefox closes" settings with regards to clearing the history or cookies.

The clearing History on closedown is a double edged sword when it comes to places.sqlite issues.

On the one hand a user clearing history on closedown is likely to have a smaller places.sqlite as the database contains only the single session history. This means clearing History will be faster and less likely to cause hangs or problems.

On the other hand available time is limited at closedown and if problems occur they may then cause issues at a subsequent startup or fail to complete. So keeping the database smaller with less history by clearing automatically may cause less problems if you do inevitably decide to clear the history. Short hangs at some startups may be an acceptable price to pay, if the alternative is the browser crashes and/or fails to clear History. A developer reported recently a fast machine with a ssd could take several several minutes or fail to clear History.

Just as an aside Telemetry collects metrics on the startup times but by default telemetry is turned off on Releases, if more user turned it on developers would be more likely to be aware of the issue. I will not directly help you but turning on telemetry may help developers, and as I already mentioned FHR will give you solid data about startup times.

• Share data with Mozilla to help improve Firefox
• FHR: Firefox Health Report - understand your browser performance

Obviously there should not be problems with clearing History in Firefox, or with shutdown or startup hangs. However we know in recent Firefox versions there have been issues and some of those issues are being solved in stages.

Thanks. So, do you think my hangs would be corrected simply by switching my "history" privacy settings? What is the default in this regard?

The default is to remember History.

Your best course of action, and probably until you are on at least Fx 47 (early June) may be as follows

1. Leave Firefox set to clear history on closedown - As that is clearly what you prefer
2. Try to remember prior to each close down to manually clear History
   I am hoping Firefox will be more successful if it is able to do a lot of the work outside the shutdown process.
   • Delete browsing, search and download history on Firefox_how-do-i-clear-my-history
     Perhaps even clear history repeatedly within a browsing session, if you are not using the History, and can afford to have Firefox potentially hang or freeze.
3. On shutown give Firefox as long as possible so it has a chance to shutdown cleanly, or generate a crash report, before you shutdown the computer.
4. If you do get crash reports generated, let us have the Crash IDs (they begin bp- )
   • Mozilla Crash Reporter

Alternatively leave Firefox on the default of not clearing history and do not clear it at all, including manually, and problems relating to hangs due to places.sqlite should cease.

Forum Note , another fix now in Fx47 Bug 1250363 - Speedup history removals by simulating a per-statement trigger Old bugs still not fully resolved include Bug 871908 - Clearing "browsing and download" history does excessive disc IO (due to huge wal file) + tracker Bug 691507 Remaining shutdown issues Bug 1248837 - shutdownhang in nsThread::Shutdown() | Firefox crashes, sometimes the restart fails

John99 said

Short hangs at some startups may be an acceptable price to pay, if the alternative is the browser crashes and/or fails to clear History. A developer reported recently a fast machine with a ssd could take several several minutes or fail to clear History. Obviously there should not be problems with clearing History in Firefox, or with shutdown or startup hangs. However we know in recent Firefox versions there have been issues and some of those issues are being solved in stages. The default is to remember History. Your best course of action, and probably until you are on at least Fx 47 (early June) may be as follows

1. Leave Firefox set to clear history on closedown - As that is clearly what you prefer
2. Try to remember prior to each close down to manually clear History
   I am hoping Firefox will be more successful if it is able to do a lot of the work outside the shutdown process.
   • Delete browsing, search and download history on Firefox_how-do-i-clear-my-history
     Perhaps even clear history repeatedly within a browsing session, if you are not using the History, and can afford to have Firefox potentially hang or freeze.
3. On shutown give Firefox as long as possible so it has a chance to shutdown cleanly, or generate a crash report, before you shutdown the computer.
4. If you do get crash reports generated, let us have the Crash IDs (they begin bp- )
   • Mozilla Crash Reporter

Alternatively leave Firefox on the default of not clearing history and do not clear it at all, including manually, and problems relating to hangs due to places.sqlite should cease.

---

Forum Note , another fix now in Fx47 Bug 1250363 - Speedup history removals by simulating a per-statement trigger Old bugs still not fully resolved include Bug 871908 - Clearing "browsing and download" history does excessive disc IO (due to huge wal file) + tracker Bug 691507 Remaining shutdown issues Bug 1248837 - shutdownhang in nsThread::Shutdown() | Firefox crashes, sometimes the restart fails

Okay, this more detailed explanation has helped me understand what the problem probably is.

However, I would like to reiterate contrary to my title on this question - I wish I hadn't concentrated on the start-up time at the beginning - that while the hang at start-up originally concerned me, my greatest annoyance is with the small and consistent hangs DURING a long session on Firefox. I could deal with the slow start-up so long as the little bugs later in the session didn't happen.

Anyway, I'll try and turn off clearing history at shutdown and see if that corrects anything. A problem I see with that is that I never make it through a full session of Firefox before it permnanetly hangs and I have to close out in a way Firefox doesn't prefer, in which case there is no way to know when you'd need to clear history before the end of the session.

I guess I'll just wait to see how Firefox corrects this in future versions. I'm pushing this so hard because I think a lot of users are having this problem, but have just come to accept it to a point where they think it's a regular part of a brower, and it's not.

Again, thanks for the detailed explanation.

Others may not have exactly the same problems as you. The bigger easier problems affecting the most users tend to get noticed prioritised and fixed first.

Be aware that problems with the place.sqlite may in fact be part of the problem that causes issues whilst browsing.

By all means start another new thread about that as a specific problem, but then lets try and troubleshoot the issue logically. If you install DE and try to reproduce the problem with that you have a new additional profile, a new install and an additional version of Firefox with more fixes in it. If you do not wish to go down the DE route then let's at least try in a new profile with no plugins in use and no extensions.

If you do start a new question thread mention that and we will cross link it and try not to repeat the same questions and advice unnecessarily.

Yes I know that is not realistic and not how you will want to use Firefox, but the big question needing answering is do you get those problems in that configuration ? If you do: Then it is likely some Firefox bug needing looking at and fixing. If you do not: Then it is likely one or more of your customisations or addons and to make progress you will need to show what customisation is causing the problem.

places.sqlite Problems You can easily rule these in, or out; by cloning your current profile then using Firefox with that profile but with all the places files removed (or renamed) first. Alternatively you could do that with your current profile, it is slightly more risky. It would be good practice to backup the profile and the bookmarks first.

Have you already seen

• Firefox hangs or is not responding - How to fix
  • Note places.sqlite issue are a well known cause of random hangs as mentioned in _{Firefox hangs or is not responding - How to fix}_firefox-hangs-at-random-times

Are you also relying on Firefox to restore open tabs, that is another complicating factor, as is forcing Firefox to close after a hang.

John99 said

places.sqlite Problems You can easily rule these in, or out; by cloning your current profile then using Firefox with that profile but with all the places files removed (or renamed) first. Alternatively you could do that with your current profile, it is slightly more risky. It would be good practice to backup the profile and the bookmarks first. Have you already seen

• Firefox hangs or is not responding - How to fix
  • Note places.sqlite issue are a well known cause of random hangs as mentioned in _{Firefox hangs or is not responding - How to fix}_firefox-hangs-at-random-times

Are you also relying on Firefox to restore open tabs, that is another complicating factor, as is forcing Firefox to close after a hang.

Quick question about creating a new "places" database. I read through the instructions about renaming files, but when I go to my "show folder" I only see places.sqlite and not places.squlite-journal. Will that present a problem, or do I simply need to rename places.sqlite?

Do the renaming whilst Firefox is closed. You may see only a places.sqlite

Rename any other places.sqlite files, but do not delete other <name>.sqlite files because they are for other important databases.

I am not even sure if a places.sqlite-journal is used now, but as you know temporary place.sqlite.wal & .shm are created, and I believe it may still produce places.sqlite-corrupt.

Update Latest post is

• Instant slowdown after updating to Firefox v. 45.0.2 /questions/1118000