[Spambayes] Amazing sloth

[Tony Meyer]

(I think maybe I wasn't wrong about channelling other people's problems...
<wink>)

> Here's a weird one, w/ Outlook 2000 and the addin from 
> not-so-recent-anymore CVS.  I decided to start over from 
> scratch today, so have a new(Berkeley) DB.

This is with Outlook 2002 (SP2) and the addin also from
not-so-recent-anymore CVS.  I also started over (see the spambayes-dev
message) from scratch today with a new (Berkeley) DB.  Specifically, I just
trashed the old database files (while Outlook was closed) and started
training as things arrived in the unsure folder.

> It's taking the addin from 4 to 10 seconds to score each(!) 
> message.  That's whether it's new incoming email, or via the 
> "Filter messages ..." menu item, or via a single "Show spam 
> clues".  It's mind-numbingly slow.

And, no surprise since you've read this far, I found this too.  Bizarre.

> While a message is being scored, Outlook is unresponsive to 
> keyboard or mouse input, but the process is using very little 
> CPU (typically a fraction of a percent, with very brief 
> spikes).  So it's waiting on *something*, but don't know what.
> 
> Nothing odd in the PythonWin Trace Collector display.  Ran 
> scanpst on all the relevant .pst files -- no problems.  The 
> sloth persists after restarting Outlook, and after a reboot.  
> No other Outlook operations have slowed, just SpamBayes.

All of this applies to my experience as well, although I didn't try scanpst
(I don't know if I have it, and since it didn't do Tim any good, it probably
wouldn't have helped me anyway).

> Two hours later: 

Heh ;).  I didn't spend two hours on it, though.  I remembered Tim's message
and so after about 5 minutes just started with new db's again.

>  The sloth went away then, just as mysteriously and 
> dramatically as it appeared.  Outlook remained open the entire time:
> 
>     extremely slow
>     retrain on 5 new ham and 5 new spam from scratch
>     zippy again

I started afresh (from training 1 ham and 9 spam) also, but in the same way
as before - close Outlook, move aside slow db's and start Outlook again.
Also zippy once again.

> So no clues, just bizarre symptoms.  If it happens to you, 
> don't be an idiot like I just was:  save the .db file before 
> retraining the problem away (it's the only relevant thing I 
> can think of that changed).

Normally I would have done just that, but I recalled this message (me who
struggles to remember what I had for dinner last night! <wink>) and so have
it zipped away for analysis.

So, I offer it up to anyone interested in looking into it, or offer myself
up to spend time looking into it if someone can suggest ways of doing that.
I don't really know where to start.

=Tony Meyer