Problem Launching Applications in Gnome

[Edward Ruggeri]

On Thu, 08 Mar 2007 12:54:55 -0600, Chuck Swiger <cswiger at mac.com> wrote:

> On Mar 7, 2007, at 6:57 PM, ruggeri at uchicago.edu wrote:
>> The main application I run is Vim, which I run through Gnome-
>> Terminal.  I frequently have several copies running
>> simultaneously.  In general response to Gnome-Terminal
>> commands is very fast, but sometimes when I try to open a
>> file with Vim it takes up to 20-30 seconds to load.  The
>> files are not particularly large (max 300 lines).
>>
>> During this time, if I try to launch another application in
>> Gnome (e.g., Opera or another Gnome-Terminal), it will not
>> come up.  It is as if everything is frozen until finally Vi
>> loads and opens the file, at which point anything else I have
>> tried to open works fine.
>
> Is it possible that you're low on RAM, and the system has to swap in a  
> bunch of stuff to let you task-switch to Opera or GT?  Is it only the  
> combination of GT & Vim, or do you sometimes encounter this long delay  
> when switching between applications doing other things?
>
>> I have of course looked at top when this problem occurs.  CPU
>> usage is about 2%, and there is no significant memory usage
>> either.
>
> It would be helpful to know what state the GT & vim processes were in,  
> too.

RAM usage remains very low throughout.  In addition, I have 2GB of RAM on  
this system, so while that was also my first suspicion, I don't think  
that's it.

When vim exhibits this behavior (which it doesn't always do), it will sit  
in sbwait and will finally load as it comes out of sbwait.  If I try to  
open another GT during vim's stalling, it will also be stuck in sbwait,  
generally coming out of it at the same time as vim.

Thanks very much for your thoughts!

-- Ned Ruggeri