Provided by: profile-sync-daemon_6.34-1.2_all 
NAME
profile-sync-daemon - Symlinks and syncs browser profiles to RAM (tmpfs) thus reducing
HDD/SSD calls and speeding-up browsers.
DESCRIPTION
Profile-sync-daemon (psd) is a tiny pseudo-daemon designed to manage browser
profile/profiles in tmpfs and to periodically sync back to the physical disc (HDD/SSD).
This is accomplished by an innovative use of rsync to maintain synchronization between a
tmpfs copy and media-bound backup of the browser profile/profiles. Additionally, psd
features several crash-recovery features.
Design goals of psd:
• Completely transparent user experience.
• Reduced wear to physical discs (particularly SSDs).
• Speed.
Since the profile/profiles, browser cache*, etc. are relocated into tmpfs (RAM disk), the
corresponding I/O associated with using the browser is also redirected from the physical
disc to the RAM, thus reducing wear to the physical disc and improving browser
responsiveness.
*Note that some browsers such as Chrome/Chromium, Firefox (since v21), Midori, and Rekonq
actually keeps their cache directories separately from their browser profile directory. It
is not within the scope of profile-sync-daemon to modify this behavior; users wishing to
relocate this directory, may refer to the following url for several work-arounds:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Chromium_Tips_and_Tweaks#Cache_in_tmpfs
SETUP
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/psd/psd.conf (referred to hereafter as "the config file") contains all
user managed settings.
NOTE: edits made to the config file while psd is active will be applied only after the
service has been restarted.
• Optionally enable the use of overlayfs to improve sync speed and to use a
smaller memory footprint. Do this in the USE_OVERLAYFS variable. The user will
require no password sudo rights to /usr/bin/psd-overlay-helper to use this
option and the kernel must support overlayfs version 22 or higher. See the FAQ
below for additional details.
• Optionally define which browsers are to be managed in the BROWSERS array. If
none are defined, the default is all detected browsers.
• Optionally disable the use of crash-recovery snapshots (not recommended). Do
this in the USE_BACKUPS variable.
• Optionally define the number of crash-recovery snapshots to keep. Do this in the
BACKUP_LIMIT variable.
NOTE: occasionally, updates/changes are made to the default config file
(/usr/share/psd/psd.conf) upstream. The user copy ($XDG_CONFIG_HOME/psd/psd.conf) will
need to be diffed against it.
RUNNING PSD
PREVIEW MODE
The preview option can be called to show users exactly what psd will do/is doing based on
the entries in the config file. It will also provide useful information such as profile
size, paths, and if any recovery snapshots have been created.
$ psd p
Profile-sync-daemon on Arch Linux.
Systemd service is currently active.
Systemd resync-timer is currently active.
Overlayfs v23 is currently active.
Psd will manage the following per /home/facade/.config/psd/.psd.conf settings:
browser/psname: chromium/chromium
owner/group id: facade/100
sync target: /home/facade/.config/chromium
tmpfs dir: /run/user/1000/facade-chromium
profile size: 93M
overlayfs size: 39M
recovery dirs: 2 <- delete with the c option
dir path/size: /home/facade/.config/chromium-backup-crashrecovery-20150117_171359 (92M)
dir path/size: /home/facade/.config/chromium-backup-crashrecovery-20150119_112204 (93M)
browser/psname: firefox/firefox
owner/group id: facade/100
sync target: /home/facade/.mozilla/firefox/f8cv8bfu.default
tmpfs dir: /run/user/1000/facade-firefox-f8cv8bfu.default
profile size: 145M
overlayfs size: 13M
recovery dirs: none
CLEAN MODE
The clean mode will delete ALL recovery snapshots that have accumulated. Only run it when
sure these are no longer needed.
$ psd c
Profile-sync-daemon on Arch Linux.
Deleting 2 crashrecovery dirs for profile /home/facade/.config/chromium
/home/facade/.config/chromium-backup-crashrecovery-20150117_171359
/home/facade/.config/chromium-backup-crashrecovery-20150119_112204
START AND STOP PSD
With the release of the version 6.x series of psd, the only init system that is officially
supported is systemd. Psd ships with a systemd user service to start or stop it
(psd.service). Additionally, a provided resync-timer will run an hourly resync from tmpfs
back to the disk. The resync-timer is started automatically with psd.service so there is
no need to start the timer; only start psd.service.
$ systemctl --user [option] psd.service
Available options: start stop enable disable
SUPPORTED BROWSERS
• Chromium (stable, beta, and dev)
• Conkeror
• Epiphany
• Falkon
• Firefox (stable, beta, and aurora)
• Firefox-trunk (this is an Ubuntu-only browser: http://www.webupd8.org/2011/05/install-
firefox-nightly-from-ubuntu-ppa.html)
• Google Chrome (stable, beta, and dev)
• Heftig's version of Aurora (Arch Linux:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=117157)
• Icecat
• Iceweasel
• Inox (https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=198763)
• Luakit
• Midori
• Opera (legacy, stable, next, and developer)
• Otter-browser
• Palemoon
• QupZilla
• Qutebrowser
• Rekonq
• Seamonkey
• Vivaldi
• Vivaldi-snapshot
NOTE ON SYMLINKED PROFILES
Currently, psd does not support symlinked profiles and will refuse to sync if one is
detected. For example, your firefox profile is ~/.mozilla/firefox/f8cv8bfu.default but you
have moved that directory to /foo/bar/f8cv8bfu.default and replaced it with symlink:
$ ls -l ~/.mozilla/firefox
lrwxrwxrwx 1 facade users 26 Oct 1 17:02 f8cv8bfu.default -> /foo/bar/f8cv8bfu.default
Running psd in preview mode will end in an error in forming you of this:
$ psd p
Warning!
/home/facade/.mozilla/firefox/f8cv8bfu.default appears to be a symlink but these are not supported.
Please make the browser profile a live directory and try again. Exiting.
A proper work around for firefox is to simply edit ~/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini
defining the canonical path there. One also needs to adjust the IsRelative flag like so:
[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=0
Path=/foo/bar/f8cv8bfu.default
Other solutions may exist for others browser but documenting them all here is out of
scope.
SUPPORTED DISTROS
Since psd is just a bash script with a systemd service, it should run on any flavor of
Linux running systemd. Around a dozen distros provide an official package or user-
maintained option to install psd. One can also build psd from source. See the official
website for available packages and installation instructions.
FAQ
Q1: What is overlayfs mode?
A1: Overlayfs is a simple union file-system mainlined in the Linux kernel version 3.18.0.
When used with psd, a reduced memory footprint and faster sync operations can be realized.
The magic is in how the overlay mount only writes out data that has changed rather than
the entire profile. The same recovery features psd uses in its default mode are also
active when running in overlayfs mode.
See the example in the PREVIEW MODE section above which shows a system using overlayfs to
illustrate the typical memory savings. Note the "overlayfs size" report compared to the
total "profile size" report for each profile. Be aware that these numbers will change
depending on just how much new data is written to the profile, but in common use cases,
the overlayfs size will always be less than the profile size.
Q2: How do I enable overlayfs mode?
A2: First, be sure psd is not active or else any changes to the config file will be
ignored until it is restarted. Overlayfs mode is enabled with the USE_OVERLAYFS= variable
which should be set to "yes" in the config file. Psd will automatically detect the
overlayfs version available to the kernel if it is configured to use one of them. It is
recommended to run psd in preview mode to verify that the system can in fact use overlayfs
(note that Debian 8 currently does not support an overlayfs capable kernel version).
Since version 6.05 of psd, users wanting to use this mode MUST have sudo rights without
password prompt to /usr/bin/psd-overlay-helper or global sudo rights without password
prompt. If the user does not have global rights, add the following line to /etc/sudoers
after any other lines defining sudo access. It is recommended to use /usr/bin/visudo as
root to set this up:
foo ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/psd-overlay-helper
Q3: Why do I have another browser profile directory "foo-back-ovfs" when I enable
overlayfs?
A3: The way overlayfs works is to mount a read-only base copy (so-called lower dir) of the
profile, and manage the new data on top of that. In order to avoid resyncing to the read-
only file system, a copy is used instead. So using overlayfs is a trade off: faster
initial sync times and less memory usage vs. disk space in the home dir.
Q4: I need more memory to accommodate my profile/profiles in /run/user/xxxx. How can I
allocate more?
A4: The standard way of controlling the size of /run/user is the RuntimeDirectorySize
directive in logind.conf (see the man page for logind.conf for more). By default, 10% of
physical memory is used but one can increase it safely. Remember that tmpfs only consumes
what is actually used; the number specified here is just a maximum allowed.
Q5: My system crashed for some reason and psd didn't sync back. What do I do?
A5: The "last good" backup of the browser profile/profiles should be happily on the
filesystem. Upon restarting psd (on a reboot for example), a check is preformed to see if
the symlink to the tmpfs copy of the profile is invalid. If it is invalid, psd will
snapshot the "last good" backup before it rotates it back into place. This is more for a
sanity check that psd did no harm and that any data loss was a function of something else.
Q6: Where can I find this snapshot?
A6: It depends on the browser. The snapshot will be located in the same directory as the
browser profile and it will contain a date-time-stamp that corresponds to the time at
which the recovery took place. For example, a chromium snapshot will be
~/.config/chromium-backup-crashrecovery-20130912_153310 -- of course, the date_time suffix
will be different.
Q7: How can I restore the snapshot?
A7: Follow these steps:
1. Stop psd.
2. Move the "bad" copy of the profile to a backup (don't blindly delete anything).
3. Copy the snapshot directory to the name that browser expects.
Example using chromium:
1. systemctl --user stop psd.service
3. mv ~/.config/chromium ~/.config/chromium-bad
2. cp -a ~/.config/chromium-backup-crashrecovery-20130912_153310
~/.config/chromium
At this point, launch chromium which will use the backup snapshot just copied into place.
If all is well, it is safe to delete ~/.config/chromium-bad and the snapshot. Remember, to
start psd, no browsers must be open (or psd will refuse to start).
Q8: Can psd delete the snapshots automatically?
A8: Yes, run psd with the "clean" switch to delete snapshots.
CONTRIBUTE
Users wishing to contribute to this code, should fork and send a pull request. Source is
freely available on the project page linked below.
BUGS
Discover a bug? Please open an issue on the project page linked below.
• Several cases of data loss have been reported when using eCryptFS and psd,
therefore until this issue is flushed out, users of eCryptFS are encouraged not
to use psd unless willing to help troubleshoot suspected browser corruption.
See: https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon/issues/158
ONLINE
• Project page: https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon
• Wiki page: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Profile-sync-daemon
AUTHOR
graysky (graysky AT archlinux DOT us)
28 February 2018 profile-sync-daemon(1)