Grsync Starts Very Slowly In Ubuntu 20.04

[linux4me]

I just did a clean install of Ubuntu 20.04 on two machines, and in both cases, Grsync takes a very long time to start. I tried it with both a fresh grsync.ini file and my existing one, and it made no difference.

When I started Grsync from Terminal, the only error was that canberra-gtk-module was missing. Installing it and rebooting did not improve Grsync's loading speed.

To give you an idea of how slow Grysnc's startup really is, here's the start time of LibreOffice Writer as shown by the time command:

time libreoffice --writer
real 0m2.771s
user 0m1.130s
sys 0m0.108s

and here's the start time of Grsync:

time grsync
real 0m37.736s
user 0m0.210s
sys 0m0.016s

So LibreOffice starts in only 2.771 seconds, and it takes Grsync 37.736 seconds to start!

The fix/workaround, identified in this post (https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2441572&p=13950711#post13950711) by @rbmorse, is to install appmenu-gtk2-module and reboot. Following that, time shows the following for Grsync:

time grsync
real 0m8.669s
user 0m0.110s
sys 0m0.022s

I guess libcanberra-gtk-module and appmenu-gtk2-module just need to be added as dependencies for Grsync in Ubuntu 20.04?

[Aleksey (glare123)]

In archlinux there is a patch for grsync to use gtk3. I used following steps to make binary package that's just works for me:

1. Download package from mirror to home directory: https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/grsync/

2. Open up terminal make a new deb:
mkdir archpkg
tar xf grsync-1.2.6-4-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz -C archpkg/
apt download grsync
mkdir edit
dpkg-deb -R grsync_1.2.6-2_amd64.deb edit/
rm edit/DEBIAN/md5sums
rm -r edit/usr/
mv archpkg/usr/ edit/
fakeroot dpkg-deb -b edit/ grsync.deb

3. Install new package with:
sudo dpkg -i grsync.deb

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[smk (pobox95)]

I found it necessary to install only appmenu-gtk2-module to restore function. I think this problem occurs only when you do a fresh install from an iso and choose minimal installation.
Earlier I had done a normal install using Ubuntu 20.04 iso and there was no problem. Yesterday I did minimal installation using Ubuntu 20.04.1 and the problem cropped up.

[linux4me (ta2008)]

That's interesting. Both my installations that had the issue were normal, not minimal installations.

From what I can tell, libcanberra-gtk is only necessary to avoid the warning message if you start Grsync from Terminal; it's appmenu-gtk2-module that gets the start-up time back to normal.