Re: MC problem in RH8.0 (Follow-on)

[Pavel Roskin <proski gnu org>]

Hello!

> The slowdown a is noticibly dramatic change from RH 7.3 to RH 8.0.  It feels
> like it's griding to a halt when changing directories (even ones with no
> files in it), but not the type of delay associated with sorting a directory
> with 1000s of files in it.

I could not reproduce it on Red Hat 8.0.  I tried to reproduce it on tmpfs
and reiserfs by creating long chains of directories.  My subshell is bash
2.05b from Red Hat.

What filesystem do you use?  What is the directory name?  I just don't
know how many levels you need (hundreds, thousands).  Please try running
mc without subshell support: "mc -u" - maybe it will work faster.  What
shell are you using?

Are you running nscd?  Try running or killing it and check if it makes any 
difference.  Are you using any centralized user database, like NIS?

> This change directory slowdown occurs both when tabbing from one window
> to the other, but changing directories from within the same window, and
> changing directories from the command line with the cd / command.  To me
> this points to a problem with a RH 8.0 library somewhere mc is linking
> to. But this is purely speculation.

I don't know.  To me it sounds more like a filesystem bug or a bug in the
subshell support (or may be in the subshell itself).

The latest versions of Valgrind (http://developer.kde.org/~sewardj/)  
include a profiler.  Maybe you could try using it to find where mc spends 
most of the time?

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin