KC7MM, Mar. 27, 2023

Most personal computers these days employ a solid-state disk drive (SSD). While the life of a mechanical drive is limited by the number of hours it is run, an SSD has a limit to the number of times data is written to it.

Web browsers, in the course of their operation, cache a great deal of data to the drive, and that means using up some of an SSD's useful life.

One way of reducing that wear is to write the browser cache to RAM rather than to disk. The Profile-sync-daemon utility was developed to do just that.

Profile-sync-daemon writes the browser cache to the tmpfs (temporary file system), and then periodically saves it to disk. The period between disk saves defaults to one hour, but it can be set to suit one's particular needs. If, like me, you clear the cache automatically whenever the browser shuts down, disk writes will be rare.

In order to use Profile-sync-daemon, your system must have sufficient RAM to accommodate the cache, and it must use systemd. There are 21 supported browsers.

To install Profile-sync-daemon on my Linux Mint (versions 20 & 21) desktop and laptop machines, I followed the instructions at OSTechnix.com. Details of the following steps are contained in the referenced article. It turned out to be an easy process, and worked for me the first time.

1. Install the application. I installed it from the Mint repository with:

   sudo apt install profile-sync-daemon

   (Also available in the Fedora and Arch Linux repositories.)

2. Back up the browser profile. I use Firefox, so I followed these instructions from Mozilla.
3. Create and edit the program's configuration file to specify the supported browsers.
4. Enable and start the psd service, using systemctl (systemd is required).
5. Verify that the system is working.

• Profile-sync-daemon project on GitHub.
• How To Sync Browser Profile Into Tmpfs (RAM) In Linux (OSTechnix)