R 2.0.0 (Windows): slow startup over the network
On Wed, 6 Oct 2004, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 15:50:34 +0200, Uwe Ligges <ligges at statistik.uni-dortmund.de> wrote :
R-2.0.0 with the complete CRAN collection, Bioconductor and some other stuff installed on a capable Windows 2003 Server using a client with WinNT4.0: The RGui window appears at once, the prompt within 5 seconds. As Brian Ripley already pointed out, there must be a bottleneck at your side, either the server performance or network traffic. I know from own experiences that WinNT 4.0 Server were not as good as the 2003 Server in file delivery, but I don't think it can be that dramatic.
I know almost nothing about Windows network administration. Is there a way to log activity from a particular client, so you can see what it's requesting, and how long it takes to service the requests?
Given that we run a Samba server on Solaris (and on Linux) and only use a Windows 2000/2003 server for authentication and profiles, I did this from the client. FileMon is one of a great set of utilities from www.sysinternals.com which reports all file accesses, time-stamped. Since we now have established that Thomas meant the default configuration (not just base), 4 secs is tolerable and it looks like a server problem (rather than a network problem). I would defragment the volume in case the R\library directory has got badly fragmented. For the record, R 2.0.0 took 2s to start on a Linux 500MHz Celeron box over our network, and takes 0.62s to start on a 2.6GHz P4 under Windows XP with a fast local disc (and about 0.38s on the same box under FC2 Linux).
Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595