Bug 102215

Summary:	scrolling awfully slow when photos on NFS
Product:	[Applications] digikam	Reporter:	T. K. <tristan>
Component:	Database-Media	Assignee:	Digikam Developers <digikam-bugs-null>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	normal	CC:	caulier.gilles
Priority:	NOR
Version:	0.7.2
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	unspecified
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:	7.5.0

Description T. K. 2005-03-22 23:37:32 UTC

Version:           0.7.2 (using KDE 3.4.0 Level "a" , SUSE 9.2 UNSUPPORTED)
Compiler:          gcc version 3.3.4 (pre 3.3.5 20040809)
OS:                Linux (x86_64) release 2.6.8-24.11-default

My photos (RAW and PNG files) are stored on an NFS. Creating the thumbnails works fine, takes quite long, which is okay since the Images (especially the RAW ones) are quite big (I assume embedded JPEGS are extracted?). However, scrolling the list is really, really slow, almost unusable. The Hardisk used is reasonably fast, its a normal 100 Mbit/s link so I don't think its related to network issues.

This *only* happens when my photos are on NFS. I copied them over to my homedir and its working just fine right now.

To me it seems there is a process invoked when scrolling, which the NFS utilities aren't designed to do? Like reading file list every second or so?

Curiously, CPU usage doesn't exceed 10%. This indicated a problem on the transfer side, but as I said, to my knowlege it is not related to network issues.

Comment 1 Renchi Raju 2005-03-28 20:27:42 UTC

digikam makes use of sqlite for maintaining the metadata, and sqlite and nfs don't play together too well (especially since the file locking is broken in many implementation of nfs). This database is stored in your album library path. when you are scrolling the database is being read continually to display information like tags and comments and with poor file locking on nfs, this can slow the process down considerably.

 in 0.7.1-x versions, there is a configure flag --enable-nfs-hack which will cause the database to be saved in your local home directory instead (in $HOMEDIR/.kde/share/apps/digikam). I usually don't recommend this option, unless the user is an nfs user. Using this option will not allow you to change the album library path easily.