I have discovered, that KDE under OpenSUSE 13.1 scans $HOME directories extensively. According to atime (after having mounted /home with strictatime), 3479 files of 2045892 are not only being scanned, but also opened. Apparently without reason. The result is a big delay on startup. Reproducible: Always
Also reported as 882756 with OpenSUSE bugtracking system.
Does disabling Desktop Search (Nepomuk) services solve the issue? Please ask in a help forum how to disable it.
Nepomuk (Desktop Search) has been disabled prior to my observations.
Could you please check which process is scanning the disk? You can either try the system monitor (Ctrl+Esc), "top" command in Konsole, or other monitors, such as iotop.
I have executed iotop -ob for the time of the KDE startup process (now quite lengthy) and I get mainly kdeinit4: kded4 [kdeinit] as the main I/O process occupying I/O bandwidth.
Created attachment 87378 [details] iotop -ob during kde startup
Okey, that's the worst case. To investigate further, please try to find the kded module which is responsible. For more information, see http://kdepepo.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/troubleshooting-kded4-bugs/
Sigh. Startup time is now up to 4 minutes. I guess, after all, there isn't much choice but testing each and every kded module for being the reason for this, but isn't there any hint about a possible reason?
I have done many tests, and it appears, while the reason of the scanning itself is still unkown, the huge delay results from the initial file system latency with that large hard disks. Or so to say, environments which do not scan the file system at all are fast, while those which scan even if just a little bit can get extremely slow, up to 4 minutes and more per logon. Moreover, KDE SC has been cleared of the suspicion of spying. I set this bug to FIXED, while it isn't fixed, but appears to be a mere systematic problem.
In other words, you gave up on finding which kded module was reponsible?
Yes, I gave up. While working on this, I asked myself why several directories were NOT scanned with which I would associate a meaningful relationship to certain daemon processes. Kind of creepy.