when i upgraded to mutt 1.5.15 i started experiencing certain lags in the client. e.g. when starting mutt it hangs for 5-10 seconds on checking /var/spool/mail/<username> file (which is always 0 bytes long on my system). cpu usage spikes up to 60% at that time (the latter might be normal). also loading mailboxes and simply going from one unread mesage to another one (with TAB key) causes mutt to freeze pretty often, from 0.5 second to even 3-4 seconds at times. cpu usage jumps sometimes to 80% at that time. i have a couple of large mailboxes in mbox format. more extreme ones have 6000 messages (vim mailing list , for instance). mutt-1.5.14 works with them with absolutely no problems or lags. mutt 1.5.15 lags very often, even if no mailbox is opened. current workaround is to go back to mutt-1.5.14. i have no idea what's wrong. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. launch mutt 2. do usual things, (opening a mailbox, reading messages, even starting mutt itself) Actual Results: mutt exhibits certain lack of responsiveness, works really slow. going to next unread message is very slow (even on a mailbox composed of 20 messages). Expected Results: mutt should be more responsive. 1.5.14 is much faster than 1.5.15. emerge --info Portage 2.1.2.3 (default-linux/x86/2006.1/desktop, gcc-4.1.2, glibc-2.5-r1, 2.6.20-gentoo-r5 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.20-gentoo-r5 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+ Gentoo Base System release 1.12.10 Timestamp of tree: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 08:50:01 +0000 ccache version 2.4 [enabled] dev-java/java-config: 1.3.7, 2.0.31-r3 dev-lang/python: 2.4.4 dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r5 dev-util/ccache: 2.4-r6 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.18.1 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.61 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10 sys-devel/binutils: 2.17 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.3.15-r1 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.23b virtual/os-headers: 2.6.20-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86 ~x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -mtune=athlon-xp -O2 -pipe -mfpmath=sse -msse2 -msse3" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/share/X11/xkb /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/gconf /etc/java-config/vms/ /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/web2c" CXXFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -mtune=athlon-xp -O2 -pipe -mfpmath=sse -msse2 -msse3" DISTDIR="/home/gentoo/distfiles" FEATURES="candy ccache distlocks moo sandbox sfperms strict userpriv usersandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://distfiles.gentoo.org http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/gentoo" LANG="pl_PL.utf8" LC_ALL="pl_PL.utf8" LINGUAS="pl en" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/home/gentoo/packages" PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS="--progress -z" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --delete-after --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/ packages --filter=H_**/files/digest-*" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/mnt/debian/workdirs/portage" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/home/gentoo/overlays/sunrise /home/gentoo/overlays/yoshi" SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="3dnow 3dnowext 7zip X a52 aac aalib acct acl acpi ada addbookmarks aiglx aim akode alias alsa amazon amr amuled ao aoss aotuv apache apache2 ares asf async atk audacious audiofile autoreplace bash-completion bcmath bcp berkdb bitmap-fonts bittorrent bjam bonjour boost bzip2 cairo calendar caps capslib catalogs ccache cdb cdda cddb cdr cgi chardet clearcase cli clock-screen colordiff c onnectionstatus contactnotes contrarius contrib cracklib cran crypt cscope css ctype cups curl cursors dbus dillo djbfft dmi dnotify dpmod dri dts dvd dvdr dvi ecc effects emboss emovix enca encod e esd exif expat extraengine extras fam fame fastcgi fat fbcon fbdev ffmpeg fftw firefox flac flatfile fontconfig foomaticdb fortran fpx ftp fuse gadu gd gdbm geoip ggi gif glade glib glibc-omitfp glitz glut gmp gnome gnutls gopher gpgme gpm grammar gs gsl gsm gstreamer gvim gzip hal hash highlight history icons iconv icq id3 idea imagemagick imap imlib inifile inkjar ipv6 irc irmc isdnlog jabber javascript jfs jikes jingle jpeg jpeg2k junit justify kde kdeenablefinal kdehiddenvisibility key-screen kipi kqemu l7filter lame lapack largeterminal latex lcms leim lesstif lha l ibcaca libg++ libnotify libsamplerate libvisual libwww lights lj lm_sensors logrotate lzo mad maildir mailwrapper math matroska mbox md5sum metalink mhash midi mikmod mmkeys mmx mmxext mng mod mod plug mods mouse mp3 mp4 mp4live mpeg mpeg2 mplayer mudflap multiuser musepack musicbrainz mysql ncurses nethack network nforce2 nls nntp no-old-linux no-seamonkey nosendmail nowlistening nptl nptl only nsplugin ntfs ofx ogg on-the-fly-crypt openal opengl oss overlays p2p pam pango pascal password paste64 pch pcntl pcre pdf pdo perl player plugin pmu png pop posix ppds pppd python qmax qt3 q t3support qt4 quicktime rar rdesktop readline real reflection reiser4 reiserfs remote rle rplay rrdtool rss rtc sametime scenarios sdl sdl-sound search-screen sensord session sharedext silc simple xml skins slang sms smtp sndfile sockets source sourceview spamassassin speedo spell spl sql sqlite sqlite3 srv sse sse2 ssl startup-notification statistics stroke subtitles subversion svg svga sv gz sysfs sysvipc t1lib tagwriting tcpd texteffect textures tga theora thesaurus threads threadsafe thumbnail tidy tiff tokenizer tools tordns transcode translator trayicon truetype truetype-fonts type1 type1-fonts unicode upnp usb userlocales vcd vhosts vidix vim vim-pager vim-with-x vorbis webpresence win32codecs wma wmf wordperfect x264 x86 xchatdccserver xcomposite xfs xgetdefault xine xml xmlreader xmlrpc xmlwriter xorg xpm xrandr xscreensaver xsettings xsl xv xvid xvmc yahoo yv12 zip zlib" ALSA_CARDS="intel8x0" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty ex tplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="mouse keyboard" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LINGUAS="pl en" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="radeon" Unset: CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LDFLAGS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS
I'm not sure what might be going on there... It certainly works fine here. The only suggestion I have is to recompile with USE="vanilla" and if it still happens, take it upstream. - ferdy
USE="vanilla" helped. so now i have to find the USE flag/patch that caused it. maybe that new sidebar patch introduced in 1.5.15 ebuild broke something? (i've never used it in mutt).
Same problem here. Doesn't happen with 'vanilla'. Doesn't happen when I remove the sidebar patch.
Ok, so the sidebar patch is to blame. Does it happen when you _only_ apply the sidebar patch ? - ferdy
asa
Same here, mutt 1.5.15 takes about one full minute to start with very high cpu and disk usage. It is absolutely unusable (i reverted to 1.5.14). The mailboxes (mbox format) i usually open are quite small, but i also have huge ones alongside. I guess the mentioned patch tries parse them all.
Do all of you use mbox ? I use maildir and am not seeing this one myself. - ferdy
I use mbox. I also don't seem to be able to apply only the sidebar patch, since it fails when any of the previous patches is removed. Do you have a diff against vanilla mutt source?
Yeah, just get it from upstream: http://lunar-linux.org/index.php?page=mutt-sidebar I sent upstream an email, but got no answer. - ferdy
Tested with the patch from upstream -- looks like the problem is caused by the sidebar patch alone.
OK, so I actually had a look at the patch. The problem is in the following piece of code: 90 ! int msgcount = 0; 91 ! int msg_unread = 0; 92 ! /* parse the mailbox, to see how much mail there is */ 93 ! ctx = mx_open_mailbox( tmp->path, M_READONLY | M_QUIET | M_NOSORT | M_PEEK, NULL); 94 ! if(ctx) 95 ! { 96 ! msgcount = ctx->msgcount; 97 ! msg_unread = ctx->unread; 98 ! mx_close_mailbox(ctx, 0); 99 ! } As you can see, it tries to parse all mailboxes to count the emails (regardless of whether one is using the sidebar or not). I'm sure this is fine when you have maybe 10M of email in a few mboxes, but it really doesn't scale when the amount of data is of the order of 100M or 1G.
Indeed... I informed upstream and he didn't answer. I'll drop him another email. I really don't know how to cleanly solve this one. - ferdy
Actually, here that makes mutt totally unusable, since I have 5G worth of mailboxes here with some very large mailboxes with high activity, and by the time it is over the first iteration of parsing, it goes back to re-parse the mailboxes that received another mail, and so on, essentially looping infinitely without actually ever showing anything. (Furthermore, all this happens while "Sorting mailbox" is shown on the screen, which is something it is not doing for certain.)
If I don't get a fix from upstream in a couple of days I'm going to take the patch out of our patchset and _only_ apply it if USE=sidebar. Sorry all for the troubles caused, guys. - ferdy
do you by any chance use the 'noatime' mount option for the partition that has the mailboxes? if yes, please try http://www.mutt.org/doc/devel/manual.html#check-mbox-size with version 1.5.15 and report back.
I do in fact have the fs mounted with the noatime flag. Setting check_mbox_size to 'yes' didn't seem to have any effect on the extremely long startup time.
The sidebar patch is now turned on with USE=sidebar and is ONLY applied on a vanilla tree. People that want the sidebar patch can still use it and it doesn't affect anybody else. This is all in mail-client/mutt-1.5.16 Thanks for the reports and sorry about the big delay. - ferdy
