Bug 489926 - File transfers extremely slow when using Dolphin with admin/elevated privileges and annoying constant password popups
Summary: File transfers extremely slow when using Dolphin with admin/elevated privileg...
Status: CONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: dolphin
Classification: Applications
Component: general (other bugs)
Version First Reported In: unspecified
Platform: Fedora RPMs Linux
: NOR normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Dolphin Bug Assignee
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2024-07-08 13:40 UTC by Eduardo Correia
Modified: 2025-09-06 13:39 UTC (History)
8 users (show)

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Description Eduardo Correia 2024-07-08 13:40:15 UTC
SUMMARY
When transfering files to a device/partition that needs elevated/root permissions, those transfers start fast but progressively slow down until they get extremely slow, sometimes around a few KB/s, when the device in reality supports much faster speeds.

Using a different file manager like Thunar to do the exact same file transfer between the exact same devices or partitions, using elevated privileges, the transfer is much faster, as fast as the devices can achieve, making it equal to a transfer that would be done with normal user permissions.

Dolphin also keeps asking for the root password every few minutes, pausing the transfer while it waits for the password. Makes it impossible to use dolphin for these type of transfers, because its so slow that it can take hours, but you need to constantly be staring into the screen to input the root password every few minutes or the transfer stops. Dolphin should maybe "remember" the password and not need to ask it again, at least during that file transfer, or while it itself is open with elevated privileges.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Open dolphin as admin / elevated privileges and inside it, navigate to a partition or device that needs elevated privileges to write into.
2. Copy a file from anywhere to that protected partition/device.
3. Notice the transfer starts fast but slows down to a crawl.
4. Every few minutes, notice dolphin constantly asks for the root password, and pauses the transfer while waiting for the password, even though dolphin itself was provided the password when it was first opened with elevated privileges. 

OBSERVED RESULT
Extremely slow transfer speeds and password popups every few minutes, stopping the transfer while waiting for password.

EXPECTED RESULT
Speeds at least equal to user-level privileges dolphin, and not asking the password constantly after it was already provided.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Linux: 6.8.12-200 Nobara KDE
KDE Plasma Version: 6.0.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.2.0
Qt Version: 6.6.2
Comment 1 Xury Greer 2025-02-23 18:14:12 UTC
Hello, I just wanted to add that I'm having this same experience.
I downloaded the daily Blender build from builder.blender.org and wanted to put it in /usr/local/bin/
I downloaded it and extracted the archive, and when I tried to move the files I ran into this issue with Dolphin running extremely slowly.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
* Open ~/Downloads/ in one Dolphin window
* Open /usr/local/bin/ in another Dolphin window
* Right click in the /usr/local/bin/ window and choose 'Open as Administrator'
* Enter password
* Drag the extracted Blender folder from the ~/Downloads/ window into the /usr/local/bin/ window

OBSERVED RESULT:
EXTREMELY SLOW and it keeps prompting for the password over and over again
This transfer was for 5625 files, 950.1 MiB, Started at 9:42 AM ended at 10:12 AM
There was a little gap in there somewhere since it paused to wait for the password half a dozen times and I missed one of them for a minute or two.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS:
OS: Fedora Linux 41 (KDE Plasma) x86_64
Kernel: Linux 6.12.15-200.fc41.x86_64
DE: KDE Plasma 6.3.1
WM: KWin (Wayland)
Terminal: konsole 24.12.2
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700K (12) @ 4.70 GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Lite Hash Rate [Discrete]
Memory: 9.97 GiB / 62.74 GiB (16%)
Swap: 0 B / 8.00 GiB (0%)
Disk (/): 30.59 GiB / 1.82 TiB (2%) - btrfs
Samsung SSD 980 PRO 2TB
Comment 2 Eric Renfro 2025-04-17 14:54:00 UTC
This bug continues to be an issue, using admin://path or escellating through the varied methods in Dolphin to do so, only to get about ~3 MiB/s transfer speeds from NVMe SSD to another SSD, when terminal `cp` is practically instant.

Operating System: EndeavourOS 
KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.12.0
Qt Version: 6.9.0
Kernel Version: 6.14.2-lqx1-1-lqx (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 16 × AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D 8-Core Processor
Memory: 62.7 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT
Comment 3 Eduardo Correia 2025-04-25 16:04:21 UTC
(In reply to Eric Renfro from comment #2)
> This bug continues to be an issue, using admin://path or escellating through
> the varied methods in Dolphin to do so, only to get about ~3 MiB/s transfer
> speeds from NVMe SSD to another SSD, when terminal `cp` is practically
> instant.
> 
> Operating System: EndeavourOS 
> KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.4
> KDE Frameworks Version: 6.12.0
> Qt Version: 6.9.0
> Kernel Version: 6.14.2-lqx1-1-lqx (64-bit)
> Graphics Platform: Wayland
> Processors: 16 × AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D 8-Core Processor
> Memory: 62.7 GiB of RAM
> Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT

I actually just resorted to using Thunar (because its very lightweight and I don't mind having it installed just for this exact use case) to manage files when an root-only partitions are involved, like certain external devices that have partitions only writeable by root. In Thunar the same file transfer fully reaches the max speed that the hardware allows, for example 500 MB/s or more when dealing with NVMe SSDs , while the same exact transfer between the same exact devices in Dolphin drops to 1 or 2 MB/s which is just absolutely insane and unusable.

This use case reported here is more common than people probably think. In the retro emulation devices world, we usually have to deal with root only partitions on these external devices/sd cards, and it's very stressful to see GNOME and other DEs just deal with it no problem and KDE having a lot of difficulties with it and casual users don't really know or understand why.

Finally, I should mention that this only happens when WRITING TO a root only partition (maybe root folders too? didn't test). When using dolphin to copy (read) FROM that root partition/folder to a user partition, the copy is extremely fast as it should - and this happens because when reading only, we don't need to open dolphin in admin mode, so this bug doesn't happen.
Comment 4 Johannes Näsman 2025-08-31 08:16:20 UTC
Yeah wow. Just ran into this, how annoying. Feels like I'm running a pentium 1 era device. File transfer reaching 1.9 MiB/s.

Operating System: Bazzite 42
Kernel: 6.15.9-bazzite...
KDE Plasma version: 6.4.4
KDE frameworks version: 6.17.0
Qt Version: 6.9.1
Graphics platform: Wayland
Comment 5 mydarkstar 2025-09-06 13:39:19 UTC
Also confirmed and discussed in the following Reddit thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/1n9bf0o/copying_a_file_to_an_admin_dolphin_window_is/