Slow cygwin executable start up

Slow cygwin executable start up

[Cary Lewis]

I am experiencing a problem with Cygwin on my Dell 7590.

There is a multi-second delay when starting a cygwin program from a mintty
window, but only the first time that a program is run.

E.g. if  run openssl version, then sometimes there is a delay before
anything is outputted.

If I run the command again, there is no delay.

I ran a test with strace, and I believe the delay occurs during the initial
loading of the cygwin dlls:

--- Process 6232 created
--- Process 6232 loaded C:\Windows\System32\ntdll.dll at 00007ffe3b4c0000
--- Process 6232 loaded C:\Windows\System32\kernel32.dll at 00007ffe3a660000
--- Process 6232 loaded C:\Windows\System32\KernelBase.dll at
00007ffe38c60000
--- Process 6232 thread 24052 created
--- Process 6232 thread 28400 created
--- Process 6232 thread 2788 created
--- Process 6232 loaded C:\cygwin64\bin\cygssl-1.1.dll at 00000003f7a60000
--- Process 6232 loaded C:\cygwin64\bin\cygcrypto-1.1.dll at
00000003fa540000
--- Process 6232 loaded C:\cygwin64\bin\cygwin1.dll at 0000000180040000
--- Process 6232 loaded C:\cygwin64\bin\cygz.dll at 00000003f7320000
--- Process 6232 loaded C:\cygwin64\bin\cygwin1.dll at 0000000000da0000

Can anyone suggest why this is happening?

The version of cygwin is:

$ uname -r
3.2.0(0.340/5/3)

By the way, I don't see this on my older PC, it's version of cygwin is:
3.1.7(0.340/5/3)

I don't really want to upgrade my older PC to the latest cygwin to test if
the 3.2 version is the culprit or not.

I also upgraded from windows 10 to windows 11 on the PC experiencing the
slow start issue, and that didn't have any effect on the problem.

Re: Slow cygwin executable start up

[Brian Inglis]

On 2022-04-30 08:06, Cary Lewis wrote:
> I am experiencing a problem with Cygwin on my Dell 7590.
> 
> There is a multi-second delay when starting a cygwin program from a mintty
> window, but only the first time that a program is run.
> 
> E.g. if  run openssl version, then sometimes there is a delay before
> anything is outputted.
> 
> If I run the command again, there is no delay.
> 
> I ran a test with strace, and I believe the delay occurs during the initial
> loading of the cygwin dlls:
> 
> --- Process 6232 created
> --- Process 6232 loaded C:\Windows\System32\ntdll.dll at 00007ffe3b4c0000
> --- Process 6232 loaded C:\Windows\System32\kernel32.dll at 00007ffe3a660000
> --- Process 6232 loaded C:\Windows\System32\KernelBase.dll at
> 00007ffe38c60000
> --- Process 6232 thread 24052 created
> --- Process 6232 thread 28400 created
> --- Process 6232 thread 2788 created
> --- Process 6232 loaded C:\cygwin64\bin\cygssl-1.1.dll at 00000003f7a60000
> --- Process 6232 loaded C:\cygwin64\bin\cygcrypto-1.1.dll at
> 00000003fa540000
> --- Process 6232 loaded C:\cygwin64\bin\cygwin1.dll at 0000000180040000
> --- Process 6232 loaded C:\cygwin64\bin\cygz.dll at 00000003f7320000
> --- Process 6232 loaded C:\cygwin64\bin\cygwin1.dll at 0000000000da0000
> 
> Can anyone suggest why this is happening?

Check the time stamp deltas between strace outputs for large gaps, 
especially look for and around open_shared, user_info, and 
initialization, e.g.

$ less '+/open_shared|user_info|initialization' ../pcmanfm.strace

and post them here or attach the complete strace startup output for 
diagnosis.

> The version of cygwin is:
> 
> $ uname -r
> 3.2.0(0.340/5/3)
> 
> By the way, I don't see this on my older PC, it's version of cygwin is:
> 3.1.7(0.340/5/3)
> 
> I don't really want to upgrade my older PC to the latest cygwin to test if
> the 3.2 version is the culprit or not.
> 
> I also upgraded from windows 10 to windows 11 on the PC experiencing the
> slow start issue, and that didn't have any effect on the problem.

Search the FAQ for slow e.g.

	https://cygwin.com/faq/faq.html#faq.using.startup-slow

This sounds like large initial AD entries load delays, and/or slow 
remote DC replies and/or network connection, covered in the list a few 
years ago.

The recommended solution is setting up cygserver with appropriate 
parameter settings to cache your AD entries across processes.

-- 
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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