OK, So I'm an idiot. After reading this, I thought "I haven't rebooted for a while". It turns out it's been 35 days. I think I've been having slow startup for a longer than that, but none the less, I re-booted (which took a long time), and presto: $ time python -c "import numpy" real 0m0.686s user 0m0.322s sys 0m0.363s much better! I suspect OS-X did some disk-cleaning on re-boot. Frankly, 35 days is pretty pathetic for an uptime, but as I said, I think this issue has been going on longer. Perhaps OS-X runs a disk check every n re-boots, like some linux distros do. Sorry about the noise, and thanks, particularly to Robert, for taking an interest in this. -Chris Robert Kern wrote:
On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 14:24, Christopher Barker
wrote: It isn't. The problem is on Chris's file system. Thanks for all your help, Robert. Interestingly, I haven't noticed any
Robert Kern wrote: problems anywhere else, but who knows?
I guess this is what Linux Torvalds meant when he said that OS-X's file system was "brain dead"
Whatever is wrong with his file system (Bill Spotz's identical problem suggests too many temporary but unused inodes) I didn't see anything about Bill having similar issues -- was it on this list?
From my earlier message in this thread:
""" Looking at the Shark results you sent me, it looks like all of your time is getting sucked up by the system call getdirentries(). Googling for some of the function names in that stack brings me to the message "Slow python initialization" on the Pythonmac-SIG:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/pythonmac-sig/2005-December/015542.html
The ultimate resolution was that Bill Spotz, the original poster, ran Disk Utility and used the Disk Repair option to clean up a large number of unused inodes. This solved the problem for him:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/pythonmac-sig/2005-December/015548.html """
-- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer Emergency Response Division NOAA/NOS/OR&R (206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception Chris.Barker@noaa.gov