Slowness of Cygwin

Slowness of Cygwin

[Ron House]

I have a large app., which has run successfully under both Linux and
DJGPP. The Linux version uses ncurses, whilst the DJGPP version uses
direct screen writes. I recompiled under Cygwin (it picked up the Linux
branch and compiled flawlessly), but found that the app was extremely
slow (2 or 3 times slower) than either of the others when writing to the
screen. Any thoughts?

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Ron House     house@usq.edu.au
              http://www.sci.usq.edu.au/staff/house

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Re: Slowness of Cygwin

[Robert Collins]

On 09 Aug 2001 03:03:57 +0000, Ron House wrote:
> I have a large app., which has run successfully under both Linux and
> DJGPP. The Linux version uses ncurses, whilst the DJGPP version uses
> direct screen writes. I recompiled under Cygwin (it picked up the Linux
> branch and compiled flawlessly), but found that the app was extremely
> slow (2 or 3 times slower) than either of the others when writing to the
> screen. Any thoughts?

Use Linux? 

Seriously, try full dos-box mode for the cygwin terminal, or rxvt.
Either should be faster than just gui text-box mode.

Rob

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>               http://www.sci.usq.edu.au/staff/house
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Re: Slowness of Cygwin

[Jonathon Merz]

Ron House wrote:
> I have a large app., which has run successfully under both Linux and
> DJGPP. The Linux version uses ncurses, whilst the DJGPP version uses
> direct screen writes. I recompiled under Cygwin (it picked up the Linux
> branch and compiled flawlessly), but found that the app was extremely
> slow (2 or 3 times slower) than either of the others when writing to the
> screen. Any thoughts?
> 
> 

What version of Windows are you running Cygwin on?  I'm no expert, but I have 
noticed that Cygwin apps run very slowly on Win95 and 98 compared to on NT 4 
(I think it may be some screwy difference in the Win9X terminals versus 
cmd.exe in NT 4... even running ls on 9X takes a lot longer just scrolling.) 
I run Cygwin on a Win98 system with a 650MHz processor and 256 Mb of RAM, and 
I also run it on an NT4 system with a 400MHz processor and 128 Mb of RAM, and 
_everything_ runs way, way slower on the 98 system.  Even compiling a hello 
world program takes about 45 seconds on it.  If you're on 95 or 98, I'd 
suggest giving a shot at NT and see what happens.

-- 


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Re: Slowness of Cygwin (and NT/2000 failure)

[Ron House]

Jonathon Merz wrote:
> 
> Ron House wrote:
> > I have a large app., which has run successfully under both Linux and
> > DJGPP. The Linux version uses ncurses, whilst the DJGPP version uses
> > direct screen writes. I recompiled under Cygwin (it picked up the Linux
> > branch and compiled flawlessly), but found that the app was extremely
> > slow (2 or 3 times slower) than either of the others when writing to the
> > screen. Any thoughts?

> What version of Windows are you running Cygwin on?  I'm no expert, but I have
> noticed that Cygwin apps run very slowly on Win95 and 98 compared to on NT 4
> (I think it may be some screwy difference in the Win9X terminals versus
> cmd.exe in NT 4... even running ls on 9X takes a lot longer just scrolling.)
> I run Cygwin on a Win98 system with a 650MHz processor and 256 Mb of RAM, and
> I also run it on an NT4 system with a 400MHz processor and 128 Mb of RAM, and
> _everything_ runs way, way slower on the 98 system.  Even compiling a hello
> world program takes about 45 seconds on it.  If you're on 95 or 98, I'd
> suggest giving a shot at NT and see what happens.

I am running on Windows 98. Unfortunately the program won't execute on
my friend's WinNT box nor on another friend's Win2000 box. (It says
"Error opening terminal: cygwin.") I managed to get at the W2000 box and
do some experiments, and it seems that the program actually does execute
up to the point where ncurses tries to take over the screen. As I have
linked statically, I don't think this can be due to missing dlls. The
ncurses docs seem to be standard, with no special tips for running under
Cygwin, so I am at a loss.

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Ron House     house@usq.edu.au
              http://www.sci.usq.edu.au/staff/house

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Re: Slowness of Cygwin (and NT/2000 failure)

[Robert Collins]

On 10 Aug 2001 00:49:45 +0000, Ron House wrote:
> 
> I am running on Windows 98. Unfortunately the program won't execute on
> my friend's WinNT box nor on another friend's Win2000 box. (It says
> "Error opening terminal: cygwin.") I managed to get at the W2000 box and
> do some experiments, and it seems that the program actually does execute
> up to the point where ncurses tries to take over the screen. As I have
> linked statically, I don't think this can be due to missing dlls. The
> ncurses docs seem to be standard, with no special tips for running under
> Cygwin, so I am at a loss.

Have you installed cygwin on their machine (via setup.exe?)

Rob

> 
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>               http://www.sci.usq.edu.au/staff/house
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Re: Slowness of Cygwin (and NT/2000 failure)

[Ron House]

Robert Collins wrote:
> 
> On 10 Aug 2001 00:49:45 +0000, Ron House wrote:
> >
> > I am running on Windows 98. Unfortunately the program won't execute on
> > my friend's WinNT box nor on another friend's Win2000 box. (It says
> > "Error opening terminal: cygwin.") I managed to get at the W2000 box and
> > do some experiments, and it seems that the program actually does execute
> > up to the point where ncurses tries to take over the screen. As I have
> > linked statically, I don't think this can be due to missing dlls. The
> > ncurses docs seem to be standard, with no special tips for running under
> > Cygwin, so I am at a loss.
> 
> Have you installed cygwin on their machine (via setup.exe?)

No I haven't. This program must be distributed to many
computer-illiterate people who won't want that. That's why I linked
statically, but you are probably right that something is still missing.
Strangely, the prog. executes fine on my 98 box, even from a dos shell
that doesn't have the Cygwin bin in its search path. AFAIK, that means
that the only part of the Cygwin system it can be seeing is cygwin1.dll,
which is in the windows/system directory. I have placed that dll on the
other machines in winnt/system32, which is in their path. So I am
mystified.

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Ron House     house@usq.edu.au
              http://www.sci.usq.edu.au/staff/house

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Re: Slowness of Cygwin (and NT/2000 failure)

[Robert Collins]

On 10 Aug 2001 01:32:32 +0000, Ron House wrote:
> Robert Collins wrote:
> > 
> > On 10 Aug 2001 00:49:45 +0000, Ron House wrote:
> > >
> > > I am running on Windows 98. Unfortunately the program won't execute on
> > > my friend's WinNT box nor on another friend's Win2000 box. (It says
> > > "Error opening terminal: cygwin.") I managed to get at the W2000 box and
> > > do some experiments, and it seems that the program actually does execute
> > > up to the point where ncurses tries to take over the screen. As I have
> > > linked statically, I don't think this can be due to missing dlls. The
> > > ncurses docs seem to be standard, with no special tips for running under
> > > Cygwin, so I am at a loss.
> > 
> > Have you installed cygwin on their machine (via setup.exe?)
> 
> No I haven't. This program must be distributed to many
> computer-illiterate people who won't want that. That's why I linked
> statically, but you are probably right that something is still missing.
> Strangely, the prog. executes fine on my 98 box, even from a dos shell
> that doesn't have the Cygwin bin in its search path. AFAIK, that means
> that the only part of the Cygwin system it can be seeing is cygwin1.dll,
> which is in the windows/system directory. I have placed that dll on the
> other machines in winnt/system32, which is in their path. So I am
> mystified.

I'm not. You don't have a mount table. you also don't have termcap
files. static linking just means that you need less .dll's, not that any
other part of cygwin can be skipped.

See the installing cygwin entries in the faq, or the mailing list
archives.

Rob

> -- 
> Ron House     house@usq.edu.au
>               http://www.sci.usq.edu.au/staff/house
-- 
_____________________________
Robert Collins
CEO
IT Domain Pty Limited
Your Application Solution Partner
02 9476 4223   Mobile: 0414 693 367
www.itdomain.com.au
_____________________________
 


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Re: Slowness of Cygwin (and NT/2000 failure)

[Charles Wilson]

>>Have you installed cygwin on their machine (via setup.exe?)
>>
> 
> No I haven't. This program must be distributed to many
> computer-illiterate people who won't want that. That's why I linked
> statically, but you are probably right that something is still missing.
> Strangely, the prog. executes fine on my 98 box, even from a dos shell
> that doesn't have the Cygwin bin in its search path. AFAIK, that means
> that the only part of the Cygwin system it can be seeing is cygwin1.dll,
> which is in the windows/system directory. 


AAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Don't DO that.  If you MUST use just the cygwin1.dll (without using 
setup to do a barebones install), then at LEAST put the dll in the same 
dir as the executable, and not into winnt/system32.

But I don't think that will work, either.  See, ncurses uses an on-disk 
database for most of its knowledge about various terminals' 
characteristics.  (Some terminal definitions are compiled-in, but not 
many: xterm, vt100, ansi, I think.  The choice of which terminals are 
"compiled-in" is set when then ncurses package is built; I just used the 
defaults set by the main ncurses developers)

Anyway, this means that if you link to ncurses, then your code will hunt 
for that database in the default location: /usr/share/terminfo/.  But, 
without a "real" cygwin installation, there are no regsitry entries to 
indicate where "/" is, so how can "/usr/share/terminfo" be found?

Of course, since you linked to ncurses statically, you probably aren't 
even installing the ncurses package -- which contains the terminfo 
database.  So even if your app *could* find /usr/share/terminfo -- 
there's nothing there in your "installation".

Now, you might decide that you can use libtermcap instead of ncurses. 
But termcap needs to be able to locate /etc/termcap, which brings us 
back to the same problem.

Basically, if you want to distribute a cygwin-based program, you really 
ought to instruct your users to install (a minimal version of) cygwin 
itself.  And don't forget your GPL obligations.

BTW, you can search the mailing lists for the following: a while back 
someone was investigating how to install the cygwin dist on a network 
share, and then replicate the necessary registry entries on client 
machines...I believe they were successful, but that "installation" 
method is not really supported.

--Chuck



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Re: Slowness of Cygwin (and NT/2000 failure)

[Christopher Faylor]

On Thu, Aug 09, 2001 at 09:59:39PM -0400, Charles Wilson wrote:
>Now, you might decide that you can use libtermcap instead of ncurses. 
>But termcap needs to be able to locate /etc/termcap, which brings us 
>back to the same problem.

Actually cygwin's termcap contains the cygwin entry "in memory" so that
it shouldn't be necessary to have /etc/termcap if you are only interested
in displaying things on "cygwin terminal".

cgf

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Re: Slowness of Cygwin (and NT/2000 failure)

[Charles Wilson]

Christopher Faylor wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 09, 2001 at 09:59:39PM -0400, Charles Wilson wrote:
> 
>>Now, you might decide that you can use libtermcap instead of ncurses. 
>>But termcap needs to be able to locate /etc/termcap, which brings us 
>>back to the same problem.
>>
> 
> Actually cygwin's termcap contains the cygwin entry "in memory" so that
> it shouldn't be necessary to have /etc/termcap if you are only interested
> in displaying things on "cygwin terminal".


I didn't know that -- thanks for the correction.  Anyway, this only 
helps the correspondant if he can restrict his code to only use 
libtermcap functions, and doesn't rely on any special functions that 
ncurses provides (e.g. functions without obvious replacements in 
libtermcap).

--Chuck



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Re: Slowness of Cygwin (and NT/2000 failure)

[Ron House]

Robert Collins wrote:
> 
> > mystified.

> I'm not. You don't have a mount table. you also don't have termcap
> files. static linking just means that you need less .dll's, not that any
> other part of cygwin can be skipped.
> 
> See the installing cygwin entries in the faq, or the mailing list
> archives.

Okay, the installation entries seem to say that the necessary component
is the package cygwin itself. I installed that via setup.exe on the
W2000 box, but still I get the "Error opening terminal: cygwin."
message. (As an aside, that setup prog is darned infuriating if you want
to skip all but one package.)

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              http://www.sci.usq.edu.au/staff/house

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PROBLEM SOLVED: NT/2000 failure

[Ron House]

Ron House wrote:
> 
> Okay, the installation entries seem to say that the necessary component
> is the package cygwin itself. I installed that via setup.exe on the
> W2000 box, but still I get the "Error opening terminal: cygwin."
> message. (As an aside, that setup prog is darned infuriating if you want
> to skip all but one package.)

Following this, I installed the ncurses package and everything worked. I
have a feeling that only a tiny part of that big ncurses pack is
actually used to make exes function.

My thanks to Robert Collins and the others who helped me out with this
one.

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              http://www.sci.usq.edu.au/staff/house

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Re: Slowness of Cygwin (and NT/2000 failure)

[Charles Wilson]

Ron House wrote:

> Okay, the installation entries seem to say that the necessary component
> is the package cygwin itself. I installed that via setup.exe on the
> W2000 box, but still I get the "Error opening terminal: cygwin."
> message. 


Have you installed the ncurses package (in order to get the terminfo 
database)?

> (As an aside, that setup prog is darned infuriating if you want
> to skip all but one package.)


Pre-emptive strike:  "It would be nice if somebody added an 
unattended/scriptable mode to setup.exe"  Yes, it would. Patches 
gratefully accepted.

Alternative:  install from your own local archive, with a custom 
setup.ini file that only lists cygwin and ncurses.

--Chuck





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Re: Slowness of Cygwin (and NT/2000 failure)

[Robert Collins]

On 10 Aug 2001 04:09:32 +0000, Ron House wrote:
> Robert Collins wrote:
> > 
> > > mystified.
> 
> > I'm not. You don't have a mount table. you also don't have termcap
> > files. static linking just means that you need less .dll's, not that any
> > other part of cygwin can be skipped.
 
I should have said terminfo here - I'm not a ncurses programmer (does it
show?) :]

> > See the installing cygwin entries in the faq, or the mailing list
> > archives.
> 
> Okay, the installation entries seem to say that the necessary component
> is the package cygwin itself. I installed that via setup.exe on the
> W2000 box, but still I get the "Error opening terminal: cygwin."
> message. (As an aside, that setup prog is darned infuriating if you want
> to skip all but one package.)

I believe it also says that if you ahve nay problems, install the lot.
You should read and follow up on Chuck Wilsons comments in this thread
because - now you have a mount table - that is the remaining step..
Rob

> -- 
> Ron House     house@usq.edu.au
>               http://www.sci.usq.edu.au/staff/house
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CEO
IT Domain Pty Limited
Your Application Solution Partner
02 9476 4223   Mobile: 0414 693 367
www.itdomain.com.au
_____________________________
 


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Re: PROBLEM SOLVED: NT/2000 failure

[Charles Wilson]

Ron House wrote:

> Following this, I installed the ncurses package and everything worked. I
> have a feeling that only a tiny part of that big ncurses pack is
> actually used to make exes function.


Well, actually the terminfo database is about 1M unpacked, or about 1/3 
of the total (due to the large number of small files, and large number 
of directories, usage is highly file-system dependent).  On the next 
release of ncurses, I plan to split the libs/exe's and the terminfo 
database into two separate packages.  I haven't decided what to do about 
the -src.tar.bz2 package for the terminfo-database part.

The goal here is to make it easier to update the database without 
forcing everybody to download the whole ncurses package...

Don't hold yer breath tho -- this is a round tuit problem.  (It'll 
happen when I get 'round tuit).

--Chuck






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Re: PROBLEM SOLVED: NT/2000 failure

[Christopher Faylor]

On Fri, Aug 10, 2001 at 12:32:50AM -0400, Charles Wilson wrote:
>Ron House wrote:
>
>> Following this, I installed the ncurses package and everything worked. I
>> have a feeling that only a tiny part of that big ncurses pack is
>> actually used to make exes function.
>
>
>Well, actually the terminfo database is about 1M unpacked, or about 1/3 
>of the total (due to the large number of small files, and large number 
>of directories, usage is highly file-system dependent).  On the next 
>release of ncurses, I plan to split the libs/exe's and the terminfo 
>database into two separate packages.  I haven't decided what to do about 
>the -src.tar.bz2 package for the terminfo-database part.

For this particular case isn't it likely that only the
/usr/share/terminfo/c/cygwin file is needed?

cgf

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Re: PROBLEM SOLVED: NT/2000 failure

[Ron House]

Charles Wilson wrote:
> 
> Ron House wrote:
> 
> > Following this, I installed the ncurses package and everything worked. I
> > have a feeling that only a tiny part of that big ncurses pack is
> > actually used to make exes function.
> 
> Well, actually the terminfo database is about 1M unpacked, or about 1/3
> of the total (due to the large number of small files, and large number
> of directories, usage is highly file-system dependent).

Yes, but isn't the real truth that all but one of those hundreds of
entries will never be used? That is, the terminal that is required on an
NT box will always be "cygwin", and never a DEC terminal, etc.?

> On the next
> release of ncurses, I plan to split the libs/exe's and the terminfo
> database into two separate packages.  I haven't decided what to do about
> the -src.tar.bz2 package for the terminfo-database part.
> 
> The goal here is to make it easier to update the database without
> forcing everybody to download the whole ncurses package...

Good idea. It's actually quite remarkable how much you all have done
with Cygwin. It's virtually a total Unix look-alike. My hat goes off to
all of you.

-- 
Ron House     house@usq.edu.au
              http://www.sci.usq.edu.au/staff/house

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Re: PROBLEM SOLVED: NT/2000 failure

[Charles Wilson]

>>Well, actually the terminfo database is about 1M unpacked, or about 1/3
>>of the total (due to the large number of small files, and large number
>>of directories, usage is highly file-system dependent).
>>
> 
> Yes, but isn't the real truth that all but one of those hundreds of
> entries will never be used? That is, the terminal that is required on an
> NT box will always be "cygwin", and never a DEC terminal, etc.?


Sort of.  many terminfo entries have dependencies on other entries, so 
it's not that simple.  for a bare-bones terminfo database, take a look here:

http;//www.neuro.gatech.edu/users/cwilson/cygutils/cygwin.terminfo-5.2-5

and run tic on it.  It'll create a minimal set of entries (including 
cygwin) that takes only a few K.

--Chuck


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