[GNC] Program suddenly very slow

[David T.]

John,

Thanks for the suggestions.

I haven't made any changes to my machine knowingly.

The hardware is all the same. Dell Inspiron laptop running Window 10.

Due to a number of factors, I have not accessed GnuCash for a number of 
weeks or months, so it's a little difficult for me to identify software 
changes. It's quite possible (likely, even) that Windows has pushed an 
update, or that some other app has similarly pushed an update that could 
affect operation. Apps that I know have frequent updates include: a 
couple of cloud providers that run as services, a backup software 
package that runs as a service, Google drive, and an Adobe update app. 
However, I have stopped those services and found that GnuCash still runs 
slowly. My machine currently shows 27% CPU usage in Task Manager, and I 
am seeing the same performance hit in GnuCash.

Further examination shows that the slowdown only happens when a 
transaction is committed or deleted. Autofill happens immediately. When 
a transaction is entered, the delay is on order of 2-3 seconds. If I 
delete a transaction, the delay is on order of 7 seconds. Interestingly, 
the delay here happens in two phases. The first delay (approximately 3-4 
seconds) happens when I click the Delete button in the dialog and then 
confirm the deletion; the dialog remains onscreen for this period and 
then closes. For the remaining 3 seconds delay, the register redisplays, 
and the deleted transaction remains. Then the deleted transaction clears 
out.

When I create a new book, the delays disappear.

I have looked at the trace files, and they are zero bytes in size. 
Opening them confirms that they are empty. There is a gnucash.trace.log 
file from a few days ago. It contains this (none of it seemingly relevant):

* 09:00:15 ERROR <gnc.engine> gboolean xaccAccountIsPriced(const 
Account*): assertion 'GNC_IS_ACCOUNT(acc)' failed
* 09:01:01 ERROR <gnc.engine> gboolean xaccAccountIsPriced(const 
Account*): assertion 'GNC_IS_ACCOUNT(acc)' failed
* 10:27:53  WARN <gnc.core-utils> Could not locate file AUTHORS
* 10:27:53  WARN <gnc.core-utils> Could not locate file DOCUMENTERS
* 10:27:53  WARN <gnc.core-utils> Could not locate file LICENSE

Further data points: my primary data file is stored as xml. Compressed 
size is about 6MB. As an uncompressed SQLite3 file, it weighs in a 47MB. 
The file opens with the Accounts tab, one 2x2 multicolumn report, and 8 
registers. The tab sequence is: 3 register tabs, the multicolumn report, 
the Accounts tab, and five more register tabs. When switching between 
two versions of this file (the xml and sqlite3 copies), there are 
significant delays at every stage. Basic opening of the sqlite file 
takes 90+ seconds; reopening the xml file takes 30+ (I consider this 
number reasonable). Interestingly, when switching from one file to the 
next, there is a noticeable lag in opening the various tabs. 
Understandably, there is a delay when the multicolumn report loads--but 
it's odd to me that the Accounts tab takes a couple of seconds to load. 
I mention this because I do not see this behavior when I open GnuCash 
fresh with the same file opening by default. All the tabs load 
immediately (even the report tab, which seems odd to me; I'd expect a 
delay there).

I did a full check and repair, which took a very long time. I believe 
it's finished without turning up errors, but I don't know how I could 
tell that, as there doesn't appear to be any report on results. Suffice 
to say that the progress bar along the bottom no longer has any account 
information in it, and the file doesn't need saving. That suggests that 
no errors were found. (It might be useful for the Check & Repair to 
issue a report after completion BTW)

I'll keep trying things out to see if I can figure out why GC runs so 
slowly for me. If any of this suggests something to someone, I'd 
apprecaite the insight.


David T.


On 5/31/2022 11:57 AM, john wrote:
>
>> On May 31, 2022, at 7:59 AM, David T. via gnucash-user <gnucash-user at gnucash.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I'm a long time user, running 4.10 on Windows 10. All of a sudden, I am finding significant lag (2-4 seconds) on every action I take, whether it is changing a field or entering a transaction.
>>
>> I've tried killing all other applications and rebooting, but the lag remains.
>>
>> Has anyone else seen this behavior?
>>
>> David T.
>>
>> P.S. I tried googling the issue using "site:lists.gnucash.org", but ended up with a ton of entries for the documentation. Why is the documentation mirrored on lists.gnucash.org?
> What about your computer changed at the time of "all of a sudden"? Windows update, different hardware, installed a new program? Is there any indication of what's the source of the bottleneck in Task Manager's performance tab? Is the slowdown the same if you create a new book?
>
> Does "changing a field" include committing the transaction or is the slowdown apparent when typing into the field or tabbing to the next one?
>
> As for the PS, it's because lists.gnucash.org is just an alias for code.gnucash.org (so is wiki.gnucash.org). Try `site:lists.gnucash.org/pipermail` to restrict it to the mailing list archives.
>
> Regards,
> John Ralls
>
>