LimitlessFX.Com

If you have been using Chromium like me, you know it can get pretty slow on the first start up after a couple of months of usage.
It’s mainly because of all the SQLite 3.x databases it uses for history and other settings.
So here’s a simple script to defrag and reindex all the databases chromium uses.

1. Install SQLite3 :

# install sqlite3
emerge sqlite:3 #gentoo
aptitude install sqlite3 #ubuntu/debian based

2. Close Chromium.

3. Execute this in bash :

cd ~/.config/chromium/Default #where recent chromium store its settings

find -type f -exec file '{}' \; | perl -ne 'print "$1\n" if /(.*?): SQLite/' | while read fname; do 
    sqlite3 "${fname}" VACUUM; 
    sqlite3 "${fname}" REINDEX; 
done

VACUUM : The VACUUM command rebuilds the entire database.
REINDEX : The REINDEX command is used to delete and recreate indices from scratch.

4. Results (I ran this a couple of weeks ago so the result isn’t as good as it would be the first time. :

-rw-r--r-- 1 oneofone oneofone 37M Jan 14 17:27 History
-rw-r--r-- 1 oneofone oneofone 34M Jan 14 18:01 History
.................
-rw-r--r-- 1 oneofone oneofone 39K Nov 23 10:11 History Index 2010-08
-rw-r--r-- 1 oneofone oneofone 9.0K Jan 14 18:03 History Index 2010-08

-rw-r--r-- 1 oneofone oneofone 32M Jan  2 14:12 History Index 2010-09
-rw-r--r-- 1 oneofone oneofone 12M Jan 14 18:03 History Index 2010-09

-rw-r--r-- 1 oneofone oneofone 93M Jan 14 17:29 History Index 2010-10
-rw-r--r-- 1 oneofone oneofone 71M Jan 14 18:08 History Index 2010-10

-rw-r--r-- 1 oneofone oneofone 169M Jan 14 16:06 History Index 2010-11
-rw-r--r-- 1 oneofone oneofone 161M Jan 14 18:20 History Index 2010-11

-rw-r--r-- 1 oneofone oneofone 152M Jan 14 01:43 History Index 2010-12
-rw-r--r-- 1 oneofone oneofone 137M Jan 14 18:22 History Index 2010-12

-rw-r--r-- 1 oneofone oneofone 93M Jan 14 16:16 History Index 2011-01
-rw-r--r-- 1 oneofone oneofone 92M Jan 14 18:24 History Index 2011-01
.................