emacs 22 horribly slow over vpn/dsl

emacs 22 horribly slow over vpn/dsl

[Mark Hood]

Our IT department recently upgraded us to Emacs 22.1.1 sparc-sun-solaris2.8
GTK+ version 2.11.1.  

I had been using Emacs 21.3 over a 1500/768 kbps DSL line through VPN to an X11
server running on Windows XP in my home office without a problem, but with the
new version, it's horribly slow.  Startup takes forever, and C-v takes about 2
seconds.

It doesn't seem to be related to my .emacs customizations since running Emacs
22 with -q shows the same problem.

Unfortunately I no longer have access to Emacs 21.  Before I grab the code and
build it myself, can anyone shed any insight into why Emacs 22 might be so slow
running from a Sparc/Solaris box through VPN and DSL to a XP box?  It's never
been really swift with Emacs 21, but it was usable.  

Thanks -- Mark

Re: emacs 22 horribly slow over vpn/dsl

[Mark Hood]

Mark Hood <invalid@invalid.org> writes:
> I had been using Emacs 21.3 over a 1500/768 kbps DSL line through
> VPN to an X11 server running on Windows XP in my home office without
> a problem, but with the new version, it's horribly slow.  Startup
> takes forever, and C-v takes about 2 seconds.

It looks like the vertical scrollbars are the culprit for the 2 sec
page scroll.  I turned them off and Emacs became usable again.
Startup still takes forever though.

Apparently the GTK+ scrollbars in Emacs 22 are very heavyweight.  The
Emacs 21 I was using was built with the X Toolkit scrollbars and it
works much better for remote X11 usage.

Interestingly, the -D and --basic-display startup options don't seem
to have any effect on the scrollbars; Emacs starts up with a
heavyweight display always.

I miss the lightweight scrollbars so I guess I'll have to build Emacs
22 or 21 myself.  I'll probably stick with 21 since it seemed to start
much faster.

-- Mark

Re: emacs 22 horribly slow over vpn/dsl

[Mark Hood]

Mark Hood <invalid@invalid.invalid> writes:
> Interestingly, the -D and --basic-display startup options don't seem
> to have any effect on the scrollbars; Emacs starts up with a
> heavyweight display always.

Well, apparently my .emacs was overriding the -D and --basic-display
options.  They work with -q.

So the only problem I have with Emacs 22 is the slow startup on remote
X11 connections.  Hopefully that will be resolved when I build my own
Emacs 22 with the X Toolkit and debug my .emacs a bit more.

I'll be glad when Emacs is finished :)

-- Mark

P.S.  I'm using an Emacs 21 on a Linksys NSLU2 for Gnus until I get 22
working for me, so don't let the User-Agent tag fool you :)

Re: emacs 22 horribly slow over vpn/dsl

[Tim X]

Mark Hood <invalid@invalid.invalid> writes:

> Mark Hood <invalid@invalid.org> writes:
>> I had been using Emacs 21.3 over a 1500/768 kbps DSL line through
>> VPN to an X11 server running on Windows XP in my home office without
>> a problem, but with the new version, it's horribly slow.  Startup
>> takes forever, and C-v takes about 2 seconds.
>
> It looks like the vertical scrollbars are the culprit for the 2 sec
> page scroll.  I turned them off and Emacs became usable again.
> Startup still takes forever though.
>
> Apparently the GTK+ scrollbars in Emacs 22 are very heavyweight.  The
> Emacs 21 I was using was built with the X Toolkit scrollbars and it
> works much better for remote X11 usage.
>
> Interestingly, the -D and --basic-display startup options don't seem
> to have any effect on the scrollbars; Emacs starts up with a
> heavyweight display always.
>
> I miss the lightweight scrollbars so I guess I'll have to build Emacs
> 22 or 21 myself.  I'll probably stick with 21 since it seemed to start
> much faster.
>
> -- Mark

You can build emacs 22 with the old X toolkit rather than GTK+, which should
give about the same performance as you had with emacs 21. 

The other thing to consider would be to use one of the X compression utilities.
When I had to run X over a slow connection, I found this made the connection
very usable. I can't remember the exact name, but it was something like X
differential compression protocol (xdcp?) or something similar. 

Tin

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au

Re: emacs 22 horribly slow over vpn/dsl

[Tim X]

Mark Hood <invalid@invalid.invalid> writes:

>
> I'll be glad when Emacs is finished :)
>

If you mean you'll be glad when emacs 22 is finish, well it is. It was released
last week. 

Tim

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au

Re: emacs 22 horribly slow over vpn/dsl

[Mark Hood]

Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null> writes:
> Mark Hood <invalid@invalid.invalid> writes:
> > I'll be glad when Emacs is finished :)
> 
> If you mean you'll be glad when emacs 22 is finish, well it is. It was
> released last week.

Oh, I meant the final, complete, perfect version of Emacs that I'll never want
to upgrade from :) 

-- Mark

Re: emacs 22 horribly slow over vpn/dsl

[Stefan Monnier]

> So the only problem I have with Emacs 22 is the slow startup on remote
> X11 connections.  Hopefully that will be resolved when I build my own
> Emacs 22 with the X Toolkit and debug my .emacs a bit more.

Please send a M-x report-emacs-bug complaining about those problems.
Emacs-22 uses the X toolkit scrollbars by default (obviously your build
comes from a distribution which overrode this default) but Emacs-23 will
probably use Gtk by default, so we'd want to know about such problems.
Also maybe we can do something about the slow startup.  I remember around
the Emacs-21.1 timeframe, a lot of optimization took place to reduce the
network-communication needed at startup, but I'm pretty sure we can do more.

> I'll be glad when Emacs is finished :)

Any day now,


        Stefan

Re: emacs 22 horribly slow over vpn/dsl

[Kim F. Storm]

Mark Hood <invalid@invalid.invalid> writes:

> Mark Hood <invalid@invalid.invalid> writes:
>> Interestingly, the -D and --basic-display startup options don't seem
>> to have any effect on the scrollbars; Emacs starts up with a
>> heavyweight display always.
>
> Well, apparently my .emacs was overriding the -D and --basic-display
> options.  They work with -q.
>
> So the only problem I have with Emacs 22 is the slow startup on remote
> X11 connections.  Hopefully that will be resolved when I build my own
> Emacs 22 with the X Toolkit and debug my .emacs a bit more.

I have this in my .emacs:

(add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(wait-for-wm . nil))
(add-to-list 'initial-frame-alist '(wait-for-wm . nil))
(modify-frame-parameters nil '((wait-for-wm . nil)))

-- 
Kim F. Storm  http://www.cua.dk

Re: emacs 22 horribly slow over vpn/dsl

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On 11 Jun 2007 23:37:32 -0700, Mark Hood <invalid@invalid.org> wrote:
>Tim X <timx@nospam.dev.null> writes:
>>Mark Hood <invalid@invalid.invalid> writes:
>>> I'll be glad when Emacs is finished :)
>> 
>> If you mean you'll be glad when emacs 22 is finish, well it is. It
>> was released last week.
>
> Oh, I meant the final, complete, perfect version of Emacs that I'll
> never want to upgrade from :)

Right... That will happen any millenium now :-)

Re: emacs 22 horribly slow over vpn/dsl

[Peter Lee]

>>>> Tim X writes:
    > The other thing to consider would be to use one of the X compression utilities.
    > When I had to run X over a slow connection, I found this made the connection
    > very usable. I can't remember the exact name, but it was something like X
    > differential compression protocol (xdcp?) or something similar. 

lbxproxy (low bandwidth x proxy) is what I use... it seems to help a bit.