Inkscape hangs if NFS mount goes stale

[James Purser]

Inkscape version: 0.48+devel r10528
Ubuntu Version: 11.04 (Natty)

I run inkscape on my laptop which has an NFS mount to the central office server. During a recent power outage the server was rebooted and the NFS service did not return on boot up. I attempted to start inkscape, however it hung and had to be force closed.

I think the reason for the hang is this. Inkscape appears to stat Gnomes list of recent documents on startup, because the NFS mount is stale, when it attempts to stat a file on the share, it hangs awaiting a reply from the mount (which of course never comes because the mount is stale).

[su_v (suv-lp)]

Possibly related:
Bug #740843 “Really slow to start because of .recently-used”
Bug #703517 “Inskscape slows down when an external drive is connected”

Does the hang still occur if the list of files for 'File > Open recent' is set to zero (Inkscape Preferences > Interface) and/or cleared (if not essential and a backup exists)?

Inkscape verifies each file it will show in the submenu for existence and uses the full path as tooltip:
«Open Recent menu now integrates with Windows recent documents management as well as freedesktop.org recent document lists (used by Gnome, KDE and Xfce). The list can be cleared from the Preferences dialog (the Interface tab). »
<http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/0.47#Desktop_integration_improvements>
«Items in the File > Open Recent menu, when mouseovered, show tooltips with the full URI of each file in the list. Also, files that are in the list but are missing or unaccessible are automatically hidden»
<http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/0.48#Other_features>