Gnome takes forever to launch a terminal

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ksool · Post by **ksool** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 8:31 pm

A question about gnome performance/responsiveness:

Right after boot, gnome can give me a terminal almost instantly, but after .some runtime, and with a few applications open, gnome can take 20-30 seconds to open a terminal, or any other application. The machine is not under significant cpu stress or memory stress and everything else is completely responsive. I'm stumped.

I had a similar issue a while ago when I loaded up my hosts file to block ad servers, but that has since been cleared. Any ideas?

Emopig · Post by **Emopig** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 11:03 pm

What version of gnome terminal, gnome ecetera are you using?
Does it happen when you open a second terminal or just the first time?
Does opening gnome-terminal from gnome-terminal show any error messages in the terminal? (Or better yet from another terminal like xterm)

Elfan · Post by **Elfan** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 1:55 am

I had the same problem with programs taking 30+ seconds to launch but everything else being snappy and responsive.

I rebooted and everything seems fine after 4+ days but that is of course a completely unsatisfactory 'solution'.

For Emopig
gnome-base/gnome-2.14.2
It would happen for launching the first instance of any program. So every new terminal was slow but new firefox windows were not if firefox was already open. A better title might be "GNOME: applications take 30+ seconds to launch".
No error messages for the offending programs, I didn't try running xterm.

I know that's not very helpful and as I said I am not experiencing it right now.

ksool · Post by **ksool** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 3:18 am

Sorry, I should've clarified.

It's not just the terminal. I just used it as an example since it was lightweight and should launch instantly.
I'm using gnome-2.14.2

djselbeck · Post by **djselbeck** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 11:11 am

Hello,

i've the same problems. Sometimes even the gnome-splashscreen stays on screen for a long time. I think because it waits for something. And mythfrontend also takes sometimes a little bit longer. My gentoo is very clean because i installed it only one day ago. A solution would be nice. Thanks.

DJSelbeck

jonnevers · Post by **jonnevers** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 1:47 pm

djselbeck wrote:Hello,

i've the same problems. Sometimes even the gnome-splashscreen stays on screen for a long time. I think because it waits for something. And mythfrontend also takes sometimes a little bit longer. My gentoo is very clean because i installed it only one day ago. A solution would be nice. Thanks.

DJSelbeck

I experience the slow initial execution symptoms but I think they may be inherent.

as for the splash screen, I've found two options
1) click the slash screen and it will go away
2) disable the splash screen in gnome's preferences

ksool · Post by **ksool** » Sun Sep 03, 2006 4:14 pm

jonnevers wrote: I experience the slow initial execution symptoms but I think they may be inherent.

as for the splash screen, I've found two options
1) click the slash screen and it will go away
2) disable the splash screen in gnome's preferences

I have the same issue with the splash screen. Sometimes I click it, sometimes it goes away on its own.

I hope its not inherent in gnome, because that's a big big big turnoff, easily enough to make me switch to fluxbox.
It has to be doing something, waiting for something, the question is what.

Wojtek_ · Post by **Wojtek_** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 8:03 am

*BUMP* - I experience the same problem

IKidnapGnomes · Post by **IKidnapGnomes** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 10:00 pm

I'm also running Gnome 2.14.2 and have this issue. To get the splash screen to go away I just launch any program and it goes away. Also, on the application responsiveness issue, I'm using ndiswrapper to use my wireless. It usually craps out on me after a while (I think its an acpi issue) and then everything takes a long time to start. To fix it I just shutdown my wireless interface and remove the ndiswrapper module and everything is back to normal. I don't know if this is related at all, but it works for me. Without using wireless I can let it run for days without any noticeable slowdown. Hope that helps.

wobbly · Post by **wobbly** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 4:07 pm

For me it takes a couple of minutes to launch a terminal
after logging in initially. After that initial time, everything
seems to work fine. It is annoying, though.

NOTE: I fixed my problem: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-36 ... ml#3697811

Charles Alexander · Post by **Charles Alexander** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 7:15 pm

I had the same splashscreen problem and it went away after I deleted everything in /tmp .

CompNerd · Post by **CompNerd** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 7:17 pm

The splash screen issue is a tricky one. It seems that bonobo-activation-server is dying and causing the splash screen to hang around. I dont know what exactly is the cause of that since I cant reproduce it.

Elfan · Post by **Elfan** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 2:54 pm

CompNerd wrote:The splash screen issue is a tricky one. It seems that bonobo-activation-server is dying and causing the splash screen to hang around. I dont know what exactly is the cause of that since I cant reproduce it.

I noticed the splash screen staying around with a separate problem (nautilus broken). Is there a way to textually see what Gnome is trying to start and the results? I don't see anything in /var/log.

desultory · Post by **desultory** » Thu Jan 18, 2007 4:02 pm

Depending on how the messages are output either consult ~/.xsession-errors after the program fails, or switch to a terminal, stop the xdm service and run startx piping the output to a file.

Code: Select all

su -
/etc/init.d/xdm stop
exit
startx > xoutput 2>&1

mntnoe · Post by **mntnoe** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 12:53 pm

For the reference (I had the problem too):
It could be that your /etc/hosts file has been configured improperly. Check that your hostname has been added to /etc/hosts:

Code: Select all

# IPv4 and IPv6 localhost aliases
127.0.0.1       localhost <hostname>
::1     localhost <hostname>

ksool · Post by **ksool** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 10:16 pm

I feel the need to bump this now just to say that mntnoe's solution fixed my problem (even though I was too stupid to read through the rest of the thread and find it myself). For whatever reason (fill out environment variables maybe) gnome-terminal puts out a dns request for your host name at your origional host domain (not from your current resolv.conf!)

For me, I was using a vpn connection which puts me behind a firewall which would drop outgoing dns packets (force use of internal dns server). The weird part is that it looks for my host name on the domain to which I'm connected, not my vpn domain. Weird. Anyway, all is well. Thanks.

Elfan · Post by **Elfan** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 12:58 am

I can report that thing seems to be working for me as well, I have not experienced the problem since (although it was always intermittent and could appear after days). Gnome also starts up much faster and the the splash screen goes away properly.

Now that this problem is better understood, has anyone submitted a bug report upstream?

desultory · Post by **desultory** » Mon Jan 29, 2007 8:15 am

This problem is not new, as evidenced by the topics "[topic=355637]/etc/hostname vs /etc/conf.d/hostname[/topic]" and "[topic=366308]Ye Olde Gnome & /etc/hosts problem[/topic]". As for upstream bugs, searching bugzilla.gnome.org reported nothing obviously relevant.

dorin · Post by **dorin** » Wed May 09, 2007 1:02 pm

For more feedback I would say the mntnoes solution is working on my machine too. Unfortunately the start up speed did not increase but I think I should look for other causes.