[ icewm-Bugs-698050 ] (Very) slow startup

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Bugs item #698050, was opened at 2003-03-05 18:04
You can respond by visiting: 
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=100031&aid=698050&group_id=31

Category: icewm-1.2
Group: None
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 6
Submitted By: Maarten den Braber (mdbraber)
Assigned to: Marko Macek (captnmark)
Summary: (Very) slow startup

Initial Comment:
Starting IceWM takes about 45 seconds the first time I
start my computer. The next times it starts up in about
5 to 7 seconds. Other windowmanagers start in less than
5 seconds. During the first startup there is a *lot* of
harddisk activity.

I've had this problem with every version > 1.0.9. I've
run 1.2.0, 1.2.3, 1.2.4 and am now running 1.2.7pre3.
The problem occurs with every version. 

I have tried to verify that this problem is not because
of my X11 setup. I tried commenting out all my
fontpaths, clearing up my whole .xinitrc to contain
only 'exec icewm'. Also I have compiled IceWM with
different compile options (all automatic,
--enable-antialising, --disable-menuconf). My (very
wild) guess is that it has something todo with the menu
loading, but I can't put my finger on it. I've cleaned
up my whole theme directory so that it contains only
one theme, but that doesn't help either.

I'm running Debian GNU/Linux (testing) and have
uninstalled the debian icewm package in favor of my own
compiled version. My configuration files can be found
at http://www.nedworks.org/~mdb/icewm/

mdb@tornado:~/$ icewm -v
IceWM 1.2.7pre3, Copyright 1997-2003 Marko Macek,  2001
Mathias Hasselmann

mdb@tornado:~/$ uname -a
Linux tornado.twister.nedworks.org 2.4.17 #8 Sun Mar 17
23:02:35 CET 2002 i686 unknown unknown GNU/Linux


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>Comment By: Marius Gedminas (mgedmin)
Date: 2003-03-06 23:21

Message:
Logged In: YES 
user_id=44660

I've noticed that IceWM startup takes considerably longer in
a UTF-8 locale.      I think that's the X server calculating
font metrics for all 64K characters or something like that.
 I can see the same slowdown when opening the first xterm in
my X session; subsequent xterms are fast again.  Not sure if
this is related to your problem, what does 'locale charmap'
print in your environment?

In my case (Pentium III 850) the startup time went from less
than ~6 seconds to perhaps 30 or so.

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Comment By: Marko Macek (captnmark)
Date: 2003-03-05 21:42

Message:
Logged In: YES 
user_id=1814

Old versions loaded the menus on startup. The latest version
should do this lazily.

Can you do a 

strace -tt

of an icewm startup?

Also if you compile with --enable-debug, the icewm -debug
output could be useful.

Who is spending CPU during this time? icewm? X server? Font
server? (if you have one?) Do you have NFS anywhere in sight?

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You can respond by visiting: 
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=100031&aid=698050&group_id=31