Author Topic: Firefox & temporary files (etilsq_*)  (Read 6691 times)

karotlopj

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Firefox & temporary files (etilsq_*)
« on: May 26, 2016, 03:10:51 pm »
I have a large number of files with a filename in the form etilqs_*.

I assume they are temporary files created by Firefox (38.2.1).

How should I clean them up?

Doug Bissett

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Re: Firefox & temporary files (etilsq_*)
« Reply #1 on: May 26, 2016, 04:30:22 pm »
I have a large number of files with a filename in the form etilqs_*.

I assume they are temporary files created by Firefox (38.2.1).

How should I clean them up?

I have exactly zero files with the name etilqs_* or etilsq_* (which is it?), so it is unlikely that they have anything to do with Firefox. What directory are they in?

Dave Yeo

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Re: Firefox & temporary files (etilsq_*)
« Reply #2 on: May 26, 2016, 04:37:47 pm »
I have a large number of files with a filename in the form etilqs_*.

I assume they are temporary files created by Firefox (38.2.1).

How should I clean them up?

Just delete them, preferably with FF closed otherwise some may be locked. They seem to be sqlite3 temporary files and really Mozilla should  clean them up when closed.
Ideally is a script to clean %TMP% when booting up or what I did is have %TMP% on a ramfs.ifs volume.
Have to think about opening an issue as sqlite doesn't seem to properly close anymore.

DR34264

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Re: Firefox & temporary files (etilsq_*)
« Reply #3 on: May 29, 2016, 04:06:10 pm »
The files are from qupzilla

Dave Yeo

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Re: Firefox & temporary files (etilsq_*)
« Reply #4 on: May 29, 2016, 07:23:32 pm »
Actually there is a libc API for creating randomly named temporary files which I forget the name of so quite a few programs might output them. eg with SeaMonkey and Thunderbird running here,
Code: [Select]
R:\tmp>file etilqs_YFmWMoHUZoAp9ephW8Hx
etilqs_YFmWMoHUZoAp9ephW8Hx: SQLite 3.x database

Doug Bissett

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Re: Firefox & temporary files (etilsq_*)
« Reply #5 on: May 29, 2016, 07:59:52 pm »
Quote
Just delete them, preferably with FF closed otherwise some may be locked. They seem to be sqlite3 temporary files and really Mozilla should  clean them up when closed.
Ideally is a script to clean %TMP% when booting up or what I did is have %TMP% on a ramfs.ifs volume.

Okay, that explains why I didn't find any. I use the PAE Ramdisk from the QSINIT package for %TEMP%, and it, of course, gets wiped clean at every boot.

The %TEMP%, %TMP% and %TEMPDIR% entries in CONFIG.SYS usually point to the same place, and that location should contain only currently open temporary files. Programs are supposed to clean up after themselves, but there are a number of reasons why they don't. As noted, a user should take steps to clean that out, on a regular schedule (at each boot is good).

I have heard of people who use the %TEMP% directory as temporary file storage, and that is a very BAD idea.

There are a couple of other places where files collect. SAMBA leaves log files in C:\MPTN\ETC\samba\log\Archive and C:\MPTN\ETC\SmbBackup, forever. You may want to keep a few of the latest ones, in case you need them, but hundreds of them are a bit much.