[GNC] GnuCash very slow to start up and quit

[Chris Green]

On Sun, Jun 13, 2021 at 06:31:25AM +0000, Tim Hume wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've been using GnuCash for a number of years. I especially like how it 
> can handle foreign currencies - a feature that the commercial software 
> packages tend to charge extra for. 
> 
> But a continual annoyance is how slow GnuCash is at these operations:
> 
> 1. Starting up (Takes more than a minute)
> 2. Quitting (Takes a long time)
> 3. Importing new transactions from CSV files (Easily a couple of minutes for modest imports).
> 
> I'm running GnuCash on Fedora Linux.
> 
I'm running it on two Ubuntu Linux systems (same files on both, using
Syncthing to keep synchronised).

> Version: 4.5 (27th March 2021 build)
>
In my case it's version 4.4, default from the Ubuntu repositories.

> Hardware: i5 Dell ultrabook, 8Mbyte RAM.
>
Laptop is Lenovo, i7, desktop Fujitsu i5

> Backend: SQLite database
>
Ditto


> Database size: About 36 Megabytes on an SSD drive.
> 
Mine is much smaller, only 250k or so, also on SSD on both systems.


> Is there any quick tips to speed things up? Or should I just throw more 
> hardware at it (Ryzen7 desktop or something similar)? When running top, 
> I see gnucash tends to be CPU bound when it is performing these slow tasks. 
> 
Mine starts up in a second or two and quits instantaneously.  I guess
the difference must simply be down to the size of database.  I create
a new accounts file each year, apart from anything else it keeps the
auditor happy (church accounts) and it certainly keeps it small. 
Could you maybe split your system somehow?

-- 
Chris Green