texlive is suddenly really slow

[Andrew]

Hello,

For some reason latex has suddenly become hugely slow for me. Using the simple test file:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Hello.
\end{document}

I get the output:

This is pdfTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.5-1.40.14 (TeX Live 2013)
restricted \write18 enabled.
entering extended mode
(./test.tex
LaTeX2e <2011/06/27>
Babel <3.9h> and hyphenation patterns for 78 languages loaded.
***** WAIT 9 SECONDS ****
(/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/article.cls
Document Class: article 2007/10/19 v1.4h Standard LaTeX document class
(/usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/size10.clo)) (./t.aux)
[1{/Users/andrew/Library/texlive/2013/texmf-var/fonts/map/pdftex/updmap/pdftex.
map}] (./t.aux) )</usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/fonts/type1/public/amsfont
s/cm/cmr10.pfb>
Output written on t.pdf (1 page, 11107 bytes).

I've insert the *****-line to show where the problem arises. I get exactly the same behaviour with latex and pdflatex.

I have checked and it does not seem to be a file system problem. I using TeXLive 2013 -- and I updated some packages, including some babel file, a few days ago -- on a mac book pro running macosx 10.7.5.

Babel seems to be the obvious culprit, especially as it seems to have loaded fewer hyphenation patterns in the past, but I can't see how to disable this.

Does anyone have any idea what my problem is or what I could do to find out?

Cheers,
Andrew

[Julian Bradfield]

On 2013-12-22, Andrew <andrew...@gmail.com> wrote:
> For some reason latex has suddenly become hugely slow for me. Using the simple test file:

....

> I have checked and it does not seem to be a file system problem. I using TeXLive 2013 -- and I updated some packages, including some babel file, a few days ago -- on a mac book pro running macosx 10.7.5.

First thing that comes to mind is the file database. Try running
mktexlsr (or whetever it's called in TeXLive 2013), just in case.

Then use strace (or the mac equivalent) to trace the system calls made
by pdftex, so you can see whether it's doing ridiculous numbers of
directory lookups or something.

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

On 2013-12-22 22:52:11 +0100, Andrew <andrew...@gmail.com> said:

> Hello,
>
> For some reason latex has suddenly become hugely slow for me. Using the
> simple test file:
>
> \documentclass{article}
> \begin{document}
> Hello.
> \end{document}

I can't answer your question, but I have the same problem (sometimes,
not all the time) on my office computer (running OS 10.4.11 -- an
ancient OS because I still need Classic)) but never on my MacBook Air
(running OS 10.7.5), so I suspect that either the mzchine or your OS
may have something to so with it.


--
athel

[Andrew]

Thanks for your super-quick reply Julian. I haven't solved my problem yet but you've helped me narrow the field a little and tex seemed innocent: mktexlsr didn't help but to run dtruss (the mac equivalent of strace) I had to run it as root and I as a result noticed that if I latex as root the problem disappears...

Thanks again,
Andrew


On Sunday, 22 December 2013 23:09:01 UTC+1, Julian Bradfield wrote:

[Andrew]

On Monday, 23 December 2013 12:50:27 UTC+1, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:

Thanks for your reply Athel. It does seem to be a system problem...not sure what yet.

Cheers,
Andrew

[Herbert Schulz]

Howdy,

Do you have interfering packages in your personal tree (at
~/Library/texmf)? That could account for the problem (well, at least if
you are using `sudo -H' rather than just `sudo').

Also, what is your PATH?

--
Good Luck,
Herb Schulz

[Andrew]

Well, this is embarrassing, but after many hours and many completely unnecessary tweaks of my system, I tracked down the cause of the problem. Google turned up a few other people who experienced what seems to be the same issue because of the following hallmark symptoms:
o slow when latexing even simple files
o not slow when latexing as root or another user
So I thought that I should swallow my pride and report on the problem/fix.

It turned out that my TEXINPUTS environment variable was set to:
.:~/TeX/inputs//:/usr/local/src/sage//local/share/texmf//:
The double slash - which doesn't appear in my bashrc file directly but, rather, came from another environment variable with a / - is the cause of my problem because there is a huge directory sitting under /usr/local/src/sage//.

Whether this is a bug in the way that tex(live?) processes the TEXINPUTS environment variable is open to debate, but it is certainly a user error:)

Thank you again to those who tried to (and actually did) help!
Andrew

[Julian Bradfield]

On 2013-12-23, Andrew <andrew...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The double slash - which doesn't appear in my bashrc file directly but, rather, came from another environment variable with a / - is the cause of my problem because there is a huge directory sitting under /usr/local/src/sage//.
>
> Whether this is a bug in the way that tex(live?) processes the TEXINPUTS environment variable is open to debate, but it is certainly a user error:)

It's a feature! The // is specified to mean "and all subdirs".

[Andrew]

On Tuesday, 24 December 2013 09:13:53 UTC+1, Julian Bradfield wrote:

> It's a feature! The // is specified to mean "and all subdirs".

Sure, but the question is whether this feature should apply in the middle of a directory string. In this case I had the directory (incorrectly) specified as
/usr/local/src/sage//local/share/texmf//
and tex was searching in all subdirectories of /usr/local/src/sage// as well as, or instead of(?), all subdirectories of /usr/local/src/sage/local/share/texmf/.

I do want tex searching in all subdirectories of
/usr/local/src/sage/local/share/texmf/
but I think that it's dubious that this extra feature should apply to a prefix of a directory in TEXINPUTS. If I wanted both directories searched I should put
/usr/local/src/sage//:/usr/local/src/sage/local/share/texmf//
into TEXINPUTS.

Andrew

[Julian Bradfield]

On 2013-12-24, Andrew <andrew...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Sure, but the question is whether this feature should apply in the middle of a directory string. In this case I had the directory (incorrectly) specified as
> /usr/local/src/sage//local/share/texmf//
> and tex was searching in all subdirectories of /usr/local/src/sage// as well as, or instead of(?), all subdirectories of /usr/local/src/sage/local/share/texmf/.

What that *ought* to mean is "look for any directory of the form
/usr/local/src/sage/..../local/share/texmf
which seems a not unreasonable feature to provide.

E.g. suppose I have fonts directories scattered throughout a more
complex hierarchy, I might want /texy-stuff//fonts

[Robin Fairbairns]

Andrew <andrew...@gmail.com> writes:

> Well, this is embarrassing, but after many hours and many completely
> unnecessary tweaks of my system, I tracked down the cause of the
> problem. Google turned up a few other people who experienced what
> seems to be the same issue because of the following hallmark symptoms:
> o slow when latexing even simple files
> o not slow when latexing as root or another user
> So I thought that I should swallow my pride and report on the problem/fix.
>
> It turned out that my TEXINPUTS environment variable was set to:
> .:~/TeX/inputs//:/usr/local/src/sage//local/share/texmf//:
> The double slash - which doesn't appear in my bashrc file directly
> but, rather, came from another environment variable with a / - is
> the cause of my problem because there is a huge directory sitting
> under /usr/local/src/sage//
>

> Whether this is a bug in the way that tex(live?) processes the
> TEXINPUTS environment variable is open to debate, but it is certainly
> a user error:)

dunno about user error, but it's certainly an "unintended result" that
i've come across before. in my case, a research student had loaded pgf
(or the like) into his ~/texmf tree. this increased the file count of
the tree, from 5 or so, to an amazing number. in the absence of an ls-R
file, the file search routines were doing a recursive scan of a large
number of files, over nfs to our netapp filer.
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge