2s delay for new windows in metacity

[Stephane Chauveau <s chauveau chello nl>]

Hello,

I have an odd problem with metacity and gnome2.
Each new application take from 1 to 2 seconds before the window appear.

I only had 1 hour to inverstigate the issue before leaving my office for 
the
week-end. Here is the situation as much as I can describe it from home.

This is a recent RedHat 7.3 linux server (Atlon > 1 Ghz).

The display was exported to a Win2000 pc running Exceed 7.x
(a X11 server) . This is also a fast PC.

The gnome2 desktop was compiled locally from the latest garnome 18.0
(not rpm based).

The linux server runs gdm from the redhat gnome 1.4 rpms.  Exceed
connects to it via XDMCP.

All disks are NFS but our network is really good so you can hardly
notice it.

I was alone on the linux server and the client pc. No intensive tasks
were running.

The delay is consistent. I applies to all  applications (xterm,
gnome-terminal,  emacs, ...).  They all have the same 2s delay
before their first window appear. I do not know if opening a
second window shows the same delay.

I tried a few other wm (mwm, twm) and they are not affected by the
problem.  Their windows appear immediatly.

The problem is not limited to programs started from the panels. An
X11 program started from a terminal shows the same delay.

Metacity does not produce any suspicious error mesages.

A few things I did not try (and will not be able to try before monday):

 o any other gnome2 window manager (sawfish?)
 o running XFree86 on the console
 o disable the session management
 o see if that the delay applies to all windows or only to the main
    application window.
 o enable some debug/trace in metacity (how?).



Stephane.