Fetch Softworks

extremely slow scrolling speed (9 posts)

• Started 14 years ago by Jim
• Latest reply 14 years ago from Jim Matthews

• Jim Member

  Hi,
  When scrolling in directories with only a few dozen files, scrolling is very slow the first time I scroll through the file list (scrolling through the list in subsequent times seems to work fine..sometimes..other times it's slow again). When scrolling (or clicking on the scroll bar) the response is extremely slow (up to about 2 seconds) when viewing directories with several hundred files. During this time, CPU usage for Fetch is spiking. Is there a fix coming for this or any settings I can change to alleviate this problem?

  This is after the file list has downloaded, so it doesn't seem that it would be a connection issue. I'm running Fetch 5.5.3 on a Macbook Pro with Snow Leopard 10.6.2 and plenty of free ram, etc.

  Thanks!

  Posted 14 years ago #

• Scott McGuire Administrator

  Hi Jim,

  We haven't had any reports of a problem like this before, and I've done testing with Fetch 5.5.3 on my MacBook Pro running Mac OS X 10.6.2 and could not duplicate the problem.

  So we'd like some more information to help us investigate.

  Have you always had this problem with Fetch? Or did it start after you upgraded to Fetch 5.5.3, or after you upgraded to Mac OS X 10.6?

  What speed is the processor in your MacBook Pro, and how much memory do you have total? (You can find that out by going to the Apple menu and choosing About This Mac.)

  And, does the problem persist after you restart your Mac?

  Thanks,

  Scott McGuire
  Fetch Softworks

  Posted 14 years ago #

• Jim Member

  Hi Scott,

  Thanks for replying so promptly.

  I definitely had this problem with Fetch 5.5.2. Honestly I don't remember when exactly it started to occur. It's possible it's been a gradual slowing down and I've just finally decided to post about it. I know that makes it more difficult from a troubleshooting perspective. I don't recall if the upgrade to 10.6 had any effect, but it's completely possible that I wasn't using Fetch a lot near the time when I upgraded (and so I may not have correlated in my mind the 10.6 upgrade and slow Fetch performance).

  Processor is 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and I have 3 gigs of ram.

  The problem persists after restart.

  Thanks,
  Jim

  Posted 14 years ago #

• Scott McGuire Administrator

  Hi Jim,

  Thanks for the additional information.

  Could you please do the following, and see if it fixes the problem? (I realize you're not trying to edit files or set editors, it's just a quick way to find the necessary link.)

  * Open Fetch.
  * Go to the Help menu, and choose Fetch Help.
  * In the help window, search for "launch services" (without quotes).
  * Double-click on the "Fixing problems choosing editors" help topic that appears in the search result.
  * Scroll down to the paragraph that begins with "If this does not fix the problem, your Launch Services database needs to be rebuilt."
  * Please read that paragraph and the following ones, and then click the "rebuild my Launch Services database for me" link, and follow the instructions.

  Let us know if that helps or not.

  Thanks,

  Scott McGuire
  Fetch Softworks

  Posted 14 years ago #

• Jim Member

  Hi Scott,
  I rebuilt the launch services database and it completed, but didn't help with the scrolling speed at all.

  Thanks,
  Jim

  Posted 14 years ago #

• Scott McGuire Administrator

  Hi Jim,

  Thanks for trying that, sorry to hear it didn't help.

  We'd like you to send us some files that may help us figure out why scrolling is so slow for you. Could you please do the following? Note that both files may be large - it's okay if you want to compress them before sending them to us.

  First, we'd like to see a copy of your system.log:

  * Click the desktop background to select the Finder.
  * Choose "Go to Folder..." from the Go menu in the Finder.
  * Enter "/var/log" (without the quotes).
  * Locate the system.log file in that folder. (There may be other files named "system.log" with numbers after them, you don't need to send those.)
  * Email it to us at bugs@fetchsoftworks.com .

  Next, we'd also like to see your Fetch.log file:

  * Click the desktop background to select the Finder.
  * Choose "Home" from the Go menu in the Finder.
  * Open the Library folder.
  * Open the Logs folder.
  * Find the file named "Fetch.log"
  * Email it to us at bugs@fetchsoftworks.com .

  Thanks, and let me know if you have any questions about these instructions.

  Scott McGuire
  Fetch Softworks

  Posted 14 years ago #

• John Strope Member

  Not sure if this one was resolved, but I too had painfully slow scrolling in the latest Fetch under Snow Leopard. After poking around, I noticed my com.fetchsoftworks.Fetch.plist had grown to 1.2 MB and included a bunch of references to local directory paths that i had recently navigated in the finder. So I trashed the prefs and relaunched Fetch, and now scrolling speed is super fast. just wanted to post that in case others are having the annoying scroll. Not sure if it was caused from continual upgrades since the OS8/9 days or if it is something in Snow Leopard. Thanks.

  Posted 14 years ago #

• Jim Member

  Hi John,
  I exchanged a dozen emails with Fetch's helpful tech support to get to the bottom of this. I guess neither of us thought to update the message board, so sorry about that.

  You're right that it's an issue with the plist file. Here's what Fetch tech support had to say:

  Looking at your preferences file, I think I see the problem. I know from the Fetch.log you sent yesterday that your server is full of files that have extensions consisting of (apparently) random numbers*. Fetch treats each different extension as a different kind of file - that's how it's able to let you specify that jpg files should open in this program after downloading, html files open in that program, etc. So Fetch make a note of every file "kind" it sees, based on the extension. Which means with your server, over time Fetch has accumulated and stored a humongous amount of information about all the "kinds" of files it's seen - much more than any preferences we've ever seen before! (Even though I imagine they're all really the same kind of file, they all have different apparent extensions.)

  So, when you're scrolling through a file list, Fetch is trying to match the information in the file list against the rather large list of stored file kinds. With such a large stored list, things bog down.

  Removing the preferences file removed that long list of stored file kinds, so comparisons are quick again. Assuming you're going to keep working with the same servers, eventually you'll accumulate a large list again, and things might start to slow down.

  *I run simulations on a supercomputer, and filenames are automatically created which have an extension that contains the 'job number'. Every time I run a simulation, the job number is different so Fetch was creating a different entry in the plist for basically hundreds or thousands of individual files.

  I think they added it to their bug list but it seems like a rare problem so it may be a while before they fix it.
  hth
  Jim

  Posted 14 years ago #

• Jim Matthews Administrator

  Hi,

  We have an experimental version of Fetch that should address this slow scrolling problem. If you are still seeing the problem please drop a note to bugs@fetchsoftworks.com and we'll send you that experimental version to try.

  Thanks,

  Jim Matthews
  Fetch Softworks

  Posted 14 years ago #