#117 F28 Change: NSS Default File Format SQL
Closed 5 years ago Opened 6 years ago by jkurik.

This issue tracks the release note for the following Fedora Change:

NSS Default File Format SQL
owned by @kengert

If you own this change, please add additional information here that we should communicate to Fedora users. Specifically, please consider:

  • New features available because of this change - pick 2 or 3 that are important
  • Considerations for users of previous releases of Fedora (upgrade issues, format changes, etc.)
  • Links to any upstream Release Notes
  • If this helps Fedora be a superior environment for our target audiences, please explain how so that we can emphasize this.

Your notes to us do not need to be formally written. We will edit them and add details as needed. This is a way for you to ensure that we know what is critical about your change.

If you want to write this release note, then:

  • Assign this issue to yourself
  • Check the wiki page linked above, find out what the change is about
  • Determine whether the change actually made it into the release or not[0]
  • Write a draft release note using that information against the correct branch here, in Pagure. (or see below)
  • Get in touch with the contact person/people listed on the wiki page, either through IRC or e-mail, and ask them to check your draft for technical accuracy
  • Submit your Release Note as a PR to this repository.

Once you're done with the above, make sure to either commit the relnote to an appropriate section of the Release Notes book, or, if you're not familiar with Git, AsciiDoc, or whatever else, just add it to this issue as a comment and let pbokoc[1] and Brian ( @bex ) know that you're done with this one and you'd like the note included. Also make sure to do this even for relnotes that haven't been checked by the change owner.

[0] You can do that by asking the change owner listed on the wiki page; alternatively you can infer it by checking the tracker bug (linked in Wiki) in Bugzilla and looking at its status; see bug comments for details. Ask someone on the mailing list or on IRC if you're not sure.
[1] In #fedora-docs on FreeNode (UTC+1 timezone, online mostly during the day on weekdays), or pbokoc @redhat.com if you can't get a hold of me on IRC.


Metadata Update from @rkratky:
- Issue assigned to rkratky

6 years ago

Could you please write release notes with the following information?

The library Network Security Services (NSS), which is used by Mozilla Firefox, Gnome Evolution, Mozilla Thunderbird and other applications, changed its default database format for storing keys, certificates and trust information. The new database format is based on SQlite and uses the filenames cert9.db, key4.db and pkcs11.txt. The previous database format used Berkeyley DB (DBM) and filenames cert8.db, key3.db, secmod.db

The primary benefit of the SQlite storage is support for concurrent access by multiple applications. When using the previous default file format based on DBM, accidental concurrent access could result in corrupted storage.

Unless an application explicitly requests either the DBM or SQL format, the NSS library will automatically migrate the application's NSS database from the old to the new format. The old database files will not be updated further. Most users should not experience differences in operation. Applications that perform many NSS read/write operations may experience a minor performance decrease.

Users, who store their system home or application data directory on a network filesystem, are advised to set the following environment variable NSS_SDB_USE_CACHE=yes prior to starting applications that use NSS. Without setting this environment variable, users of network filesystems may experience a major slowdown with some applications, such as Firefox. The environment variable enables the use of a caching strategy in NSS, that works around the slowness of network filesystems. Because this caching strategy causes a performance decrease on fast filesystems, it isn't used by default, but requires users to explicitly enable it by setting the environment variable.

Additional technical details can be found in the Fedora Wiki: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/NSSDefaultFileFormatSql

Change
Unless an application explicitly requests either the DBM or SQL format
to
Unless an application explicitly requests the DBM format

Suggested addition for the release-notes/en-us/desktop/Desktop.adoc :

== Slow Firefox performance with network filesystems
If a user's home directory is on a network filesystem such as NFS, SMB, CIFS etc., users of Firefox may experience a major performance regression. As a workaround, set the following environment variable prior to starting Firefox: NSS_SDB_USE_CACHE=yes
In order to set the environment variable, it is advisable to add the following line to the user's $HOME/.bashrc file, and to either reboot or log out and log back in to Fedora: export NSS_SDB_USE_CACHE=yes
The same recommendation applies to all Mozilla applications.

Metadata Update from @pbokoc:
- Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)

5 years ago

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