Recent MPLayer SVN builds are very slow to invoke

[t.artem@…]

Recent MPLayer SVN builds are very slow to start on my PC.

time mplayer
MPlayer SVN-r30722-4.2.4 (C) 2000-2010 MPlayer Team
... a lot of text ...

• * * SEE THE MAN PAGE FOR DETAILS, FURTHER (ADVANCED) OPTIONS AND KEYS * * *

real 0m1.390s
user 0m0.070s
sys 0m1.083s

That's almost 1.5 seconds to start without any parameters.

I've also noticed that mplayer makes my sound card produce a short click every time it starts - I highly doubt mplayer should touch any hardware when it's being invoked.

strace -c mplayer produces:

% time seconds usecs/call calls errors syscall

---

42.29 0.005411 2 3144 90 ioctl (!!!)
27.93 0.003574 13 281 munmap
26.84 0.003434 3 1064 244 open

[t.artem@…]

strace -tt log

[t.artem@…]

strace -T log

[t.artem@…]

This looks terribly wrong:

stat64("/dev/dsp", {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0660, st_rdev=makedev(14, 3), ...}) = 0 <0.000036>
open("/dev/dsp", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK) = 3 <0.000054>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000421>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000291>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000412>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000407>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000404>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000406>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000405>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000397>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000405>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000411>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000410>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000405>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000408>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000420>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000409>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000398>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000321>
ioctl(3, SNDCTL_DSP_SPEED or SOUND_PCM_READ_RATE, 0xbff2f77c) = 0 <0.000318>
close(3) = 0 <0.000044>
open("/dev/dsp", O_WRONLY|O_NONBLOCK) = 3 <0.000054>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000229>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000244>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000324>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000328>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000326>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000327>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000312>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000334>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000317>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000314>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000323>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000332>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000330>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000324>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000324>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000328>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000215>

close(3) = 0 <0.000314>
stat64("/dev/dsp1", {st_mode=S_IFCHR|0660, st_rdev=makedev(14, 19), ...}) = 0 <0.000027>
open("/dev/dsp1", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK) = 3 <0.000173>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000564>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000452>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000539>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000553>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000570>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000589>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000562>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000558>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000554>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000558>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000628>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000549>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000589>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000622>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000680>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000617>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000477>
ioctl(3, SNDCTL_DSP_SPEED or SOUND_PCM_READ_RATE, 0xbff2f77c) = 0 <0.000311>
close(3) = 0 <0.005525>
open("/dev/dsp1", O_WRONLY|O_NONBLOCK) = 3 <0.000309>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000555>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.002227>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000195>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000158>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000152>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000190>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000168>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000134>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000144>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000153>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000115>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000123>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000162>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000144>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000165>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000146>
ioctl(3, SOUND_PCM_READ_CHANNELS, 0xbff2f778) = 0 <0.000138>
close(3) = 0 <0.053507>

[reimar]

Try compiling without OpenAL, they have done some incredibly idiotic things in one of their later releases (like opening ALSA on library load I think).
If it doesn't help, please bug me, this definitely should not happen.

[t.artem@…]

Thank you very much, Reimar!

Compiling mplayer without openal solved the problem.

[t.artem@…]

For anyone using Fedora I've filed a relevant bug report in their bugzilla:

​https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=567870