Re: remote X11/GNU emacs/ssh: Incredible slowness loading libs

[David Abrahams]

"Krishnakumar B" <kitty@cs.wustl.edu> wrote in message
dmlu1k8cwsc.fsf@charanga.cs.wustl.edu">news:dmlu1k8cwsc.fsf@charanga.cs.wustl.edu...
> On Sunday, 29 September 2002, "David Abrahams" wrote:
> > I've been doing some work on remote machines on the other U.S. coast
> > recently, and have noticed strange and horrible delays associated with
> > running GNU emacs in an X window. At first I thought the problem was the
> > speed of traffic associated with X11, but I don't think so any more. The
> > reason I say these delays are strange is that they seem to be worst when
> > emacs is loading libraries (especially during startup), or just when
it's
> > trying to respond to "C-x C-f" the first time. On some machines, it
takes
> > literally minutes to give me the "find file:" prompt. I don't see the
same
> > problems when running "emacs -nw" in an xterm (that just blasts along
like
> > crazy), so it can't be having trouble loading the libraries. I don't see
> > anything this bad when running Xemacs, so I doubt there's a real problem
> > with the X11 GUI stuff. Can't imagine what the problem is. Any ideas?
>
> Enable ssh compression. It helps a lot.

Makes absolutely no perceivable difference. However, there is an enormous
amount of network traffic going by, as I can see by the flashing light on my
NIC. This happens any time a new emacs mode (library) loads on the remote
machine. What in the world could it be accessing on my local machine? All
that handshaking, just as emacs starts up?!?

I heard some rumour that you can work around this with .Xauthority, but I'm
tired of diddling around with things I don't really understand, and I still
can't understand why there should be any difference between emacs -nw and
emacs when it comes to loading libraries.

still-baffled-ly y'rs,
dave

--
-----------------------------------------------------------
           David Abrahams * Boost Consulting
dave@boost-consulting.com * http://www.boost-consulting.com