Disc light comes on when pressing keys in Iceweasel Preferences. Is this malevolent?
 

Hi

On Linux, I'm using the Iceweasel web browser (it's effectively Firefox), and in
Edit/Preferences/General/Startup, when I type a URL into the "Home Page" box,
the hard disc light comes on for EVERY press of a key (eg www.google.com). This
seems odd (and unnecessary). I've tried entering text in other boxes in
Preferences, and the disc light DOESN'T come on.

Do you know why the disc light is coming on, and does it suggest that something
sneaky and malevolent is happening? Thanks very much.

John

I can confirm that this happens on my own installation of Iceweasel. I use Crunchbang Waldorf.
Although this does seem a little odd, I don't think there is anything malevolent involved here.

Thanks very much qlue ...

... for trying it out on your Iceweasel. The fact that the same thing happens
on two completely separate computers seems to suggest that it's not malware
doing something behind the scenes.

The time and trouble you've gone to is much appreciated. Regards, John.

Does anyone know why on earth the writers of Iceweasel (who I genuinely
appreciate are very clever programmers) would perform disc accessing for EVERY
press of a key when just entering humble non-crucial text into the "Home Page"
box in Edit/Preferences/General/Startup ?

John

Quite simple: Auto-completion. I just tried that on Firefox (where the behavior is the same) and it tried to auto-complete what I was typing into that box. To do this it compares what you type with what it can find in the history, which is stored on the disk.