gwibber stores extreme number of messages in gwibber.sqlite

[Per Ångström]

Binary package hint: gwibber

I noticed that ~/.config/gwibber/gwibber.sqlite is > 640 MB big!

Having only run gwibber for a few months and not having posted or received more than a few hundred Twitter messages I was puzzled and took a deeper look in the database. To my surprise I find that gwibber has some 340,000 messages stored in the 'messages' table, complete with message text, of which only a small fraction are from me or to me.

It looks like the bulk of the messages is the result of 'search' operations. Needless to say, I find this storing of messages extremely wasteful of disk space. It could easily lead to users running out of space on their home partition. I don't know if I'm using gwibber in the wrong way, but that doesn't really matter.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: gwibber 2.32.2-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-28.50-generic 2.6.35.11
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-28-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Jun 19 12:15:46 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100429)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: gwibber

[Per Ångström (autark)]

It seems that merely by invoking Refresh (F5) makes gwibber store some 100 messages in the database.
Does gwibber really need to store search results in a database?

[Victor Vargas (kamus)]

maybe this issue could be duplicate of bug 734917

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[Per Ångström (autark)]

> maybe this issue could be duplicate of bug 734917

No, I don't think so. That bug is about where gwibber stores different types of data; this one is about gwibber storing too much data.

[Per Ångström (autark)]

Workaround: manually execute "delete from messages where operation = 'search';" and compact database. That brings down the size to 3.2 MB.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Neal McBurnett (nealmcb)]

My gwibber.sqlite is 3.5 GB right now. And now my gwobber.sqlite.journal is 1.2 GB and growing while I watch.
I have no idea what is in there, but it is slowing the system down as well as trashing the remainder of my disk space, then space returns, only to drain away again. Totally broken it seems to me.

I'm not sure what gwibber is doing for me, but I never post with it, and probably just follow my twitter account with it, since I do see notifications.

[Neal McBurnett (nealmcb)]

I have 2.5 GB of free space in $HOME, and a gwibber.sqlite file that is 3.5 GB in size

Every 14 minutes gwibber starts writing a gwibber.sqlite-journal file, which fills up until I'm out of space. 2 minutes later it is deleted, and 5 minutes after that it starts filling up again. I think this has gone on for hours.

So that may be a separate bug from the underlying issue of the database being wastefully big to start with, but I'm just pointing out that it can end up eating up to twice that amount of disk, and running into this pathological periodic trashing of free space.

I'm running 12.04 precise, with gwibber 3.4.2-0ubuntu2.

What are some workarounds? How can I e.g. temporarily just disable gwibber when I'm low on space or get rid of it entirely? What are the consequences of uninstalling it? What are alternatives to gwibber? I don't even care much about the tweet notifications....

[Alexandre Erwin Ittner (aittner)]

Happening for me too, my gwibber.sqlite is 1,1 GB. Counting for current amount of messages, I got:

sqlite> select count(*) from messages;
560965

So, I just removed messages older than 30 days with:
> delete from messages where time < (strftime('%s','now') - 30*24*60*60);

I think Gwibber should run this garbage collect periodically, but preserving directed and send messages unless the user asks it to delete them too.