Firefox caching to NFS mounted home directories killing disk IO on file server
 

Good Morning,

I'm having a big issue with Firefox caching. I have an Ubuntu Lucid LTSP
server (fully patched) with 32 Thin Clients (Dell Optiplex GX270s). All
of our student account home directories are stored on a file server and
are nfs mounted on each LTSP server. The problem I'm having is that when
the lab is full of students using Firefox, firefox seems to be
constantly trying to cache pages to their home directories. This is
driving up the disk IO on our file server dramatically which also causes
load average on file server to spike and cpu going into wait states.
This then trickles back down to the LTSP server also causing the load
average to jump dramatically. I've been trying for a few days now to get
Firefox to cache pages to /tmp locally for all users. I updated to
Firefox 7, then edited the firefox.js in /etc/firefox/pref to include
these lines -


pref("general.config.obscure_value", 0); (supposed to tell FF not to
worry about byteshift)

pref("general.config.filename", "firefox.cfg");

I then took a customized firefox.cfg file and placed it in
/usr/lib/firefox-7.0.1. If I launch firefox, I get an error that it
couldn't read the configuration file. So I downloaded the mozilla 13
byteshift perl script and ran it on my cfg file. Then Firefox launches
successfully, only problem is that it doesn't seem to be pulling or
locking any of the preferences I set in the file (most importantly,
browser.cache.parent_directory). Can anyone tell me what I'm doing
wrong? Or is there a better way to set Firefox to cache locally for all
users?


Any help is appreciated!

Jeff Donaldson
Newark Charter School

--
Regards,
Jeff Donaldson
Data Services Manager
Newark Charter School
(302) 369-2001 ext:425
jdonaldson@ncs.k12.de.us


--
edubuntu-users mailing list
edubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/edubuntu-users