HackerReposA FIELD GUIDE TO OPEN SOURCE
ProSponsor the shelf♧ 0
← Back to top all-time
graysky2
profile-sync-daemon
Shell2015–2026
graysky2 / profile-sync-daemon

profile-sync-daemon

Symlinks and syncs browser profile dirs to RAM thus reducing HDD/SDD calls and speeding-up browsers.

Web Development
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
7Distinct people
13Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1.1KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Symlinks and syncs browser profile dirs to RAM thus reducing HDD/SDD calls and speeding-up browsers.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year13 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2015-05-31 08:57:02 UTC to 2026-03-03 23:22:44 UTC.

012342015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20152016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 2 submissions, 2 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 1 submissions, 3 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC422
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC413
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

13 sources
LargoLasskhyfv·Mar 3, 2026
I like it because I know my ways around Arch, which I've used for a long time in the past. I liked Alpine less, whenever I've tried it, which last time was about two years ago. When I got 'new' hardware, and wondered if I just should go on like before, or look at what has happened elsewhere, broaden ones horizons, so to speak. Being fast is no problem when running from and IN RAM, which it can do. But so is Antix, which turns Debian into a screaming pig on fire. In the end, it felt like it had too many annoying 'guardrails'(Distro conventions, expectations) while having much less ready-made stuff to offer than Debian. With 32GB RAM, boosted even further by ZRAM layered on top of all of it, it's not that important anymore. Especially when using https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon which puts the "OS-within-the-OS" (any relevant
Read the rest
browser) into RAM too, or rather it's profile, which speeds things up really good, while at the same time lessening the load on your SSD, and I/O in general. Rock solid and stable, like the rest of the system too. In spite of being called 'Gamer distro'. (On my hardware and config, nerdy naysayers don't need apply, kthxbai) Kasheex!
In Bootc and OSTree: Modernizing Linux System Deployment
LargoLasskhyfv·Nov 30, 2025
Anecdotically I'm using it since about 2 years on obsolete Kaby Lake Core i5 7500T & Core i7 7700T @35Watts in 1 liter Lenovo Thinkcentres (M910q tiny). Which have integrated HD630 Graphics. Under Plasma/KDE. I just followed their defaults in the installer, which at the time were BTRFS for the filesystem, whith systemd-boot, and everything wen't well. The only thing which I would have done differently in hindsight would be the boot partition at 2GB, which seems wasteful when only about 50MB are ever used. But shrug? What else, hrrm, the stuff is mostly clocked down to 800Mhz, because of the chosen scheduler, in spite of this nothing ever lags. Though the systems have 32GB RAM, that should help with that. It's really smooth, even on that old 'crap', even mostly clocked down. I also had it never crash on me with anything, neither single app
Read the rest
lications, or system hangs. After upgrading with pacman -Syu I immediately clear the package cache with pacman -Scc, because I never ever needed that. At the moment I'm considering to remove the pacman hooks into btrfs-snapshots, because I never needed them either. Seems like cargo-cult to me :-) I also let it bitrot for up to 150 days, meaning no updates whatsover, and then lifting it up in one accumulated rush. Effortlessly. In the past, because I've been lazy and couldn't be bothered. Lately more often :-) I didn't reboot in these long phases without updates. Just suspend to RAM. Which works every single time. And the system stayed always responsive. Their ZRAM setup is usable by default. No fiddling necessary. With this stability I dared to activate https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon / https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Profile-sync-daemon and never had any trouble with it so far. At the moment I'm having fun discovering a new world of audio experience with https://github.com/wwmm/easyeffects How could I live without that?! (Don't worry, cores stay at 800Mhz with that playing YT in FF, or watching a movie with MPV) At least on my hardware it's the DREAM. Oh. Did I mention I don't game at all? With the exception of maybe some Freeciv in the browser...
In CachyOS: Fast and Customizable Linux Distribution
LargoLasskhyfv·Jul 19, 2025
Good for you. The 'oh-so-slow' regarding FF was meant as satirical btw. With what I'm using it for, it doesn't lag. Maybe because of https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon mostly, and some other fine-tunings, which make it not touching the filesystem over and over again. I really recommend PSD. Not even insane amounts of RAM, it usually takes about 4 to 5GB, rarely going to 8, then shrinking back a while after closing too much tabs. Imagine that!1!! It's all about some sysctl settings :-) Sideberry (Tree-Style-Tabs like extension) was the ugliest offender there. Though that may have been me misconfiguring it. OTOH I didn't manage to find settings where it didn't do that, and still looked like I wanted it to. At that time, maybe a year ago, I've thought of it as potential 'instant ssd-killer'. Couldn't be bothered. Deinstalled. No
Read the rest
w FF has some basic version of vertical tabs by Mozilla itself. It suffices(for now).
In Firefox-patch-bin, librewolf-fix-bin AUR packages contain malware
LargoLasskhyfv·Nov 1, 2023
MX too bloated. Feel the power of ANTIX with RUNIT, run it RAM, setup some persistence on some storage in whichever way you like, disable and remove all the fluff like conky, use IceWM as WM, and zzzfm as filemanager, make it look nice, feel the insane speed. Remaster. Then this is yours. And stays that way, whith some remastering from time to time, due to updates, whatever. Giggle like a madman for not having to care about all the useless 'make work, make work!' anymore. Relax. Edit: While you're at it, deploy https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon / https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Profile-sync-daemon or something like that for FF. That's the icing on the cake, for FF not to access your /home , whereever that may be stored. Works wonders for Sideberry, and preserves your precious SSD. OFC that applies to any distro. Edit: s/Ope
Read the rest
nbox/IceWM
In Mozilla treats Debian devotees to the raw taste of Firefox Nightly
lucb1e·Sep 23, 2016
Launchpad is such a shitty website, aimed at Ubuntu and only Ubuntu, links to source code or more information are nowhere to be found... Searching on Github, this seems to be it. Turns out, there's releases for Arch, Debian, etc. and it's even in the repositories. No need to add a ppa. https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon For Debian and co: $ apt-cache show profile-sync-daemon $ sudo apt-get install profile-sync-daemon
In Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox
lighttower·Sep 23, 2016
`mount -l` shows a filesystem of type `overlay` for each browser (in my case, chromium, chrome, firefox). Range from 50MB to 200MB. I have it to sync to disc every 15min - so I reckon it empties out the ram whenever it syncs. I've never had a problem (8GB of ram on the machine I initially installed it on) so I haven't watched to see what the max size is. The developer [1] is great - issues are resolved very quickly. [1] https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon
In Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox
lighttower·Sep 23, 2016
Chrome, on my system, is even more abusive. Watch the size of the .config/google-chrome directory and you'll see that it grows to multi-GB in the profile file. There is a Linux utility that takes care of all browsers' abuse of your ssd called profile sync daemon, PSD. It's available in the debian repo or [1] for Ubuntu or [2] for source. It uses `overlay` filesystem to direct all writes to ram and only syncs back to disc the deltas every n minutes using rsync. Been using this for years. You can also manually alleviate some of this by setting up a tmpfs and symlink .cache to it. [1] https://launchpad.net/~graysky/+archive/ubuntu/utils [2] https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon EDIT: Add link, grammar EDIT2: Add link to source
In Heavy SSD Writes from Firefox
ThatPlayer·May 31, 2015
There's also profile-sync-daemon [0] that moves browser profiles into a ramdisk to save writing to/from the SSD all the time. I think a copy-on-write filesystem like btrfs would be better on SSDs because they do not change written data but rather write to a new area on the drive, requiring less erases on the SSD's side. There's also F2FS (Flash-Friendly File System) which has been in the Linux kernel for a while now that specifically targets flash based drives. Though I agree that most of these optimizations do not seem necessary on modern SSDs. [0] https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon
In SSD: How to Optimize Your Solid State Drive for Linux

MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME

A few shortcuts

/
Search the collection
?
Open this guide
Esc
Close dialogs and navigation

Your saved repositories and interests stay in this browser.