Gnome-terminal slow startup Ubuntu 10.10

[Luxman]

Hello forum!

I recently did a fresh new install of Meerkat and I noticed an extremely slowness of gnome-terminal startup. The output of time is:

time gnome-terminal
real 0m4.155s
user 0m0.044s
sys 0m0.020s


As you can see it is far to slow to startup. I noticed also a raise of the CPU usage above 50% for few seconds.
Anybaody experienced the same problem? Any workaround?

Thanks a lot and happy 2011 :-)

[theasprint]

Hi,

I am not sure what is the exact cause of the problem.
There may be a few things I would want you to try:

1. Go and type the output of this in terminal. This shows what is the most consuming process etc.

top

2. Output of this. This shows the free memory you have

free -m

3. And lastly go and check the Startup Applications.

I may think that something is delaying the gnome-terminal startup. Perhaps some other program?

[matt_symes]

Hi

Do you have anything unusual in .bashrc?

Kind regards

[Luxman]

@theasprint

This is my top output while running a gnome-terminal:


PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
1818 papageno 20 0 124m 44m 18m S 6 4.4 11:39.05 plugin-containe
1723 papageno 20 0 92616 14m 10m S 3 1.4 0:03.36 gnome-terminal
1058 root 20 0 61424 19m 9m S 3 1.9 3:18.53 Xorg
1757 papageno 20 0 363m 113m 28m S 2 11.4 9:28.84 firefox-bin
9 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:02.60 events/0
1703 papageno 20 0 33944 18m 3940 S 0 1.9 0:23.21 ubuntuone-syncd
2381 papageno 20 0 2620 1124 832 R 0 0.1 0:00.03 top
1 root 20 0 2888 1652 1192 S 0 0.2 0:00.67 init
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:01.79 ksoftirqd/0
4 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
5 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
6 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1
7 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.30 ksoftirqd/1
8 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/1
10 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.86 events/1
11 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuset

here's the free -m after several hours of computer running (firefox loaded):


total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1001 853 147 0 73 440
-/+ buffers/cache: 339 661
Swap: 2180 0 2180


@matt_symes

I have a fresh install of Meerkat, no changes to the config default files, .bashrc included

[theasprint]

Hi,

Gark, I'm not so sure about this but your system looks like its ok to me. Yes, even the memory is plentiful.

Actually I'm not sure if your output of the "time" command is regarded slow or not.

I mean if I'm not wrong, your gnome-terminal starts at 4 seconds after startup?
I'm not sure how to read the results from the "time" command, in fact its my first time seeing this command.

If its like 4 seconds then only gnome-terminal starts, I find it ok.

[matt_symes]

Hi

4.5 second is slow and a lot slower than on my install of 10.10. Then again you have 1Gb memory and that is not a huge amount, but i still find it hard that it would take a factor of 10 longer to load on your machine than mine because of the memory (as this is a new default setup).

You could just load it at startup (as part of startup applications) and use screen when you first open the terminal. That way you will not have to open another while the PC is up and running, just create and remove screens as required.

After all, a 4 second startup is not the end of the world. But it is a bit strange...

BTW: Is anything appearing in any of the logs when you start up gnome terminals?


tail -f ~/.xsession-errors

Kind regards

[Luxman]

No relevant errors on that log file...
I know 1 G RAM is not much... but is more than enough for that purpose.. Plus I didn't get any problems with the previous Ubuntu release (same machine).. I know that 4 secs might sound little time but I guarantee you that to fire up a terminal its eternity...
Thanks for the screen tip, even though I don't like much work-arounds, especially for basic stuff like the gnome terminal.
I'll keep on looking for a solution..
Thanks a lot!!

[Luxman]

I noticed that starting xterm takes much less time, less than a second.. It appears to me a really "gnome-terminal" specific problem in my system :(

[Parama]

I noticed that starting xterm takes much less time, less than a second.. It appears to me a really "gnome-terminal" specific problem in my system :(

I have the same problem on my Fujitsu Lifebook E8410 (Core2Duo T9300 2.5GHz, 4GB RAM): gnome-terminal takes about 4 secs to start, xterm pops up almost before I release <enter> (after typing xterm in the Alt+F2 Run dialog)

[Parama]

I solved my own problem: Open the settings for the Default gnome-terminal profile, go to Background tab and uncheck Use background settings from system theme, selecting the color option (dunno what it's called in english, but it's not background image option nor transparent background option).

Hope it helps.

It seems like a bug but who cares as long as upcoming Natty doens't have this problem :-)

[Luxman]

Great shot!
It fixed my issue as well. Thank you Parama ;)