slow bash spawn

[Marc Compere]

Marc Compere wrote:
> Dave Korn wrote:
>> On 18 March 2007 13:28, Marc Compere wrote:
>>
>>> The recent setup.exe update has caused bash.exe to have startup times
>>> approx. 10x longer than before.  sh.exe starts pretty quickly but 
>>> bash.exe
>>> [...]
>>> Running XP sp2 on a fresh, plain vanilla cygwin install.  antivirus 
>>> is not
>>> the problem as bash started just fine on cygwin release just a few weeks
>>> ago. 
>>
>>   Perhaps something in your startup scripts is taking this time.  Open 
>> a dos
>> shell (start->run->"cmd"), cd to c:\cygwin\bin or whereever your install
>> lives, run "bash --login -i -x".  The '-x' will make it print out all the
>> commands it's running during startup; hopefully you can narrow down the
>> problem to one particular item.
>>
>>   Also, please run "cygcheck -s -v -r > cygcheck.out" and send the
>> cygcheck.out file ***as an attachment please*** with your next post.
>>
>>     cheers,
>>       DaveK
> 
> Dave,
> 
> Your suggestions were good.  I inspected the "bash --login -i -x" 
> command from cmd.exe and found nothing in particular hanging although 
> the hostname and "id -un" and "id -ng" took a little longer than the 
> rest.  Even silly simple things like a 'test' and short sed command all 
> take an unusually long time.
> 
> I ran the cygcheck command similar to what you suggested:
> 
>     cygcheck -s -v -r > /tmp/cygcheck.out  2>&1
> 
> and have attached.  Also, as an example of generally slow access to the 
> underlying XpSp2 os, an strace output of 'ls' is also attached.  ls was 
> never lighning fast in cygwin, but now it takes 2 seconds in a directory 
> with 6 files in it.  I can consistently get strace to show a burp that 
> looks like this:
>     exception C0000005 at 18B5B7C3
> right after a pair of:
>     _pinfo::set_ctty:
> commands.
> 
> Complete details are in the attached strace output from command:
> 
>     strace -o /tmp/strace_output_for_ls.txt ls
> 
> Any tips?  Are you (or anyone else) able to discern any unusual 
> incompatible dll's in the cygcheck.out or have any other hunches?
> 
> TIA again,
> Marc
> 

Well, it seems I've found the problem, or at least a big component of 
the problem.  Turns out it is likely not (directly) related to cygwin 
code but some other interaction between cygwin and the OS as a result of 
a Sonic Solutions DLA process running.  DLA apparantly stands for Drive 
Letter Access Component.  Exact process name is 
c:\windows\system32\dla\dlactrlw.exe.  Snapshot attached.

Being fed up with long XP boot-up times I had downloaded Autoruns and 
removed many, seemingly unnecessary startup processes and services. 
Oops, apparantly dlactrlw.exe is necessary for Cygwin to run quickly as 
usual.  Never would have guessed - still don't quite understand how a 
Sonic cd burner software (I presume) causes the slow down, but it's 
pretty repeatable.  5 reboots later there's a 1-to-1 correspondence with 
this process and fast cygwin bash-related commands, including 
./configure and make.

bash --login -i -x takes 33 seconds with DLA turned off (via Autoruns 
checkbox) and takes about 5.5 seconds with this process turned on.  Go 
figure?

Thanks for all your thoughtful responses,

Marc





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