listing a large folder very slow on vfat partition (actually any filesystem)

[Oebele drijfhout]

Binary package hint: nautilus

When I open a large folder (+2000 folders and files, mainly mp3-files) Nautilus hangs for minutes before it shows the contents of the folder. Sometimes Nautilus crashes altogether. It's a vfat partition. When I set Nautilus to "Icon view", it's significantly faster, but still not near as fast as I'd expect it to be.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for your bug. What version of Ubuntu do you use? What view and zoom level do you use?

[Oebele drijfhout (oebele.drijfhout)]

I'm on ubuntu-edgy, zoomlevel is 50%, but that doesn't seem to affect speed, after a few tests. It's mainly a problem when it's on "List View".

[Oebele drijfhout (oebele.drijfhout)]

Also, I have two large folders on the partition, one with 15000 files in it, and one with 4000. The one with 15000 files takes much longer to unfreeze, although the one with 4000 is slow as well.

[Oebele drijfhout (oebele.drijfhout)]

Nautilus uses 100% cpu, and there's no harddisk activity during freeze.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for the details on your configuration. That's known upstream: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=362139

[Marcel Hild (urandom)]

the last comment in the upstream bug worked for me.
I disabled accessibility in System->prefs->accessibilty and now its fast again

[abilash0101 (abilash01)]

I am using gutsy gnome. Whenever I open a folder with mp3 files, the nautilus becomes very unresponsive. Each click or right click takes a long time to bring the mp3 under focus or to bring the right-click menu respectively. This slow-down does not seem to happen in folders with no mp3.

Previously, I had just 2 mp3 files on my desktop and the whole desktop was very slow. So, I think it is not related to the folder size. After I moved the mp3 to a sub-folder, the desktop thankfully became faster again, but now nautilus becomes slow whenever I open that particular sub-folder.

Hope this helps. What is vfat by the way? I am not sure if I am using vfat...

[Alexis Bauchu (alexis-bauchu)]

I've got the same kind of bug, but it appears that "accessibility" isn't involved (for it's disabled).

My config is Ubuntu Gutsy, List view, Zoom 50, vfat partition with 15000+ files

Nautilus freezes only once after reboot. After any folder on the partition has been open once, performance goes back to normal.
Browsing the partition with other apps goes normally (totem, rhythmbox...)

[abilash0101 (abilash01)]

I was going through ubuntuforums and came across a solution that worked for me.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=652913

I'm reproducing it here. It's easy...
In Nautilus,
Edit --> Preferences --> Preview tab.
There, choose "Never" for "Preview sound files". Done !

[abilash0101 (abilash01)]

Oops, the link I actually referred to was:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=587537

However, the earlier link I gave is also helpful.
Sorry for the spam :-)

[vocx (eliudcabrera)]

This bug was reported a long time ago.
Make sure it is sufficiently different from others.

It appears to me it is just a duplicate of bug #159042, which is caused by Assistive Technologies.

Try to reproduce this bug with Assistive Technologies turned off.

[Oebele drijfhout (oebele.drijfhout)]

I haven't been bothered by this problem for a long time, but I just gave it a shot and I can confirm that this problem is only reproducible with Assistive Technologies turned -on- (on an ext3 partition btw). In my opinion it's safe to mark it as a duplicate of bug #159042.