LR6.10 takes 2-3 minutes to start running

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themoose

themoose

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This is not a major issue for me but I have 2 MacPro's 3.1, one with 16GB RAM the other with 9GB. Both have GPU acceleration (Radeon 5770, 5870). Both MacPro's are running El Capitan.
I also use a MacBook Pro 2010 (running Sierra) with 8 GB RAM without GPU acceleration. My MacBook starts running LR6.10 immediately upon opening but the MacPros have the spinning wheel for about 2-3 minutes.
Is there a simple solution to this problem?
Other than this minor issue I have not noticed any other issues with LR6.10.
 
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Is it possible it's trying to access something not present, like a drive that's not connected? It sounds like, if you really mean minutes, that something is timing out before it will start.

Or conversely, is the catalog available on a local drive on the MacPro's, or something really slow?
 
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Ferguson said:
Is it possible it's trying to access something not present, like a drive that's not connected? It sounds like, if you really mean minutes, that something is timing out before it will start.

Or conversely, is the catalog available on a local drive on the MacPro's, or something really slow?
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I have separate files and catalogs on all 3 computers (haven't synced them) so everything needed is on the internal hard drives of each computer. LR6.10 opens OK, it just won't let me access the Library or Develop screens for 2-3 minutes. I suspect it may be something to do with the MacPro hardware or El Capitan OS since the MacBook Pro (Sierra OS) doesn't have this problem at all.
 
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themoose said:
This is not a major issue for me but I have 2 MacPro's 3.1, one with 16GB RAM the other with 9GB. Both have GPU acceleration (Radeon 5770, 5870). Both MacPro's are running El Capitan.
I also use a MacBook Pro 2010 (running Sierra) with 8 GB RAM without GPU acceleration. My MacBook starts running LR6.10 immediately upon opening but the MacPros have the spinning wheel for about 2-3 minutes.
Is there a simple solution to this problem?
Other than this minor issue I have not noticed any other issues with LR6.10.
Click to expand...

There was a similar problem some time ago. That was solved by going to User/Library/Caches/Adobe and making sure you have read&write permissions, also for all subfolders. If you don't know how to do that I can post instructions later. I'm not at my Mac right now (typing this on my iPad).
 
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JohanElzenga said:
There was a similar problem some time ago. That was solved by going to User/Library/Caches/Adobe and making sure you have read&write permissions, also for all subfolders. If you don't know how to do that I can post instructions later. I'm not at my Mac right now (typing this on my iPad).
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I did check the read&write permissions (revised a couple) but still have the problem. Also I noticed folders in cache related to my anti-virus software so I uninstalled the av software but didn't solve the problem.
 
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I've seen similar behavior in the past with drive problems. Slow spinning drives for boot and catalog, and original photos stored on network storage have been the major suspects in the past. Ringing any bells?
 
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Victoria Bampton said:
I've seen similar behavior in the past with drive problems. Slow spinning drives for boot and catalog, and original photos stored on network storage have been the major suspects in the past. Ringing any bells?
Click to expand...

Yes I think that could be my problem. While I have LR installed on SS drives (both Mac Pro's), my photos are on slower 7,200 rpm SATA drives. I can live the the 2-3 min boot up but it's good to know why it's happening. Thanks Victoria.
 
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themoose said:
Yes I think that could be my problem. While I have LR installed on SS drives (both Mac Pro's), my photos are on slower 7,200 rpm SATA drives. I can live the the 2-3 min boot up but it's good to know why it's happening. Thanks Victoria.
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If you are really curious (as frankly that doesn't sound right to me), create a folder on your SS drive, add some images as normal, have it be the library folder shown in the grid when you shut down, and try it again.

There's no reason I can think of that it would touch images in a folder not currently on display, so at least in my thinking this means it won't touch your spinning drive when you start it the next time? Will it?

Is it still slow? I'm betting it is -- 1-2 minutes is a LONG time. I think it's doing something, somewhere that is timing out, something that's not accessible it is trying to touch and scan. A missing drive (check the folder list closely), or some link somewhere.

But I'm not a Mac person at all, and learning to live with it may be the best solution. But if curious, see if you can prove or disprove it by some experimentation.
 
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Ferguson said:
There's no reason I can think of that it would touch images in a folder not currently on display, so at least in my thinking this means it won't touch your spinning drive when you start it the next time? Will it?
Click to expand...

Not the photos themselves, but sometimes the folder counts can be really slow to load - but usually over network storage, rather than 7200 RPM.

1-2 minutes really is a long time. I'm wondering if there's not a combination of factors going on. Any chance you can do a screen recording of it loading up, so we can see if it's getting stuck at a certain stage?
 
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Victoria Bampton said:
Not the photos themselves, but sometimes the folder counts can be really slow to load - but usually over network storage, rather than 7200 RPM
Click to expand...

I would be extremely surprised if they came from the folders themselves as opposed to the catalog. They show up even if the drive is not mounted, don't they?

And yes, a spinning drive is SO much faster than most consumer network storage, that's one reason I suspect we haven't found the underlying issue yet. It just sounds a lot like what happens when there's some kind of access error and an eventual timeout.

Hmm... another thought... are you on the network when you do this? Try turning off wifi and disconnecting any network cable and see if it changes. Run the CC app, and try signing out and signing in again (while on the network). Maybe this is a startup authentication issue with the CC software, something in your network or DNS.
 
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Ferguson said:
I would be extremely surprised if they came from the folders themselves as opposed to the catalog. They show up even if the drive is not mounted, don't they?

And yes, a spinning drive is SO much faster than most consumer network storage, that's one reason I suspect we haven't found the underlying issue yet. It just sounds a lot like what happens when there's some kind of access error and an eventual timeout.

Hmm... another thought... are you on the network when you do this? Try turning off wifi and disconnecting any network cable and see if it changes. Run the CC app, and try signing out and signing in again (while on the network). Maybe this is a startup authentication issue with the CC software, something in your network or DNS.
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One Mac Pro is on the network and the other is not but both have the same problem. I've also signed out and signed back in to my Mac Pro so I can also run LR on a 3rd computer (MacBook Pro) when I go on vacation. The MacBook Pro has no issue with LR starting normally.
LR appears to start OK (the photos are displayed normally) until I click on any photo, then the spinning wheel goes for 2-3 minutes until I can access the photos in the library or develop modes.
 
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Victoria Bampton said:
Not the photos themselves, but sometimes the folder counts can be really slow to load - but usually over network storage, rather than 7200 RPM.

1-2 minutes really is a long time. I'm wondering if there's not a combination of factors going on. Any chance you can do a screen recording of it loading up, so we can see if it's getting stuck at a certain stage?
Click to expand...

Thanks for getting back to me. A screen shot won't really show anything other than the spinning color wheel. LR appears to start OK (the photos are displayed normally) until I click on any photo, then the spinning wheel goes for 2-3 minutes until I can access the photos in the library or develop modes.
 
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That's a bit different, as it's not lightroom starting per se, but a different step. When you say "photos are displayed normally" until I click a photo, are you clicking it to go full screen? So what if you build 1:1 previews for any photos on the first screen, then exit, let everything idle, and start up and click it into full screen in Library (i.e. loupe) but not develop?
 
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themoose said:
Yes I think that could be my problem. While I have LR installed on SS drives (both Mac Pro's), my photos are on slower 7,200 rpm SATA drives. I can live the the 2-3 min boot up but it's good to know why it's happening. Thanks Victoria.
Click to expand...
So you have Lightroom on an SSD, but is your Mac system on an SSD? If not, that's a possible cause. I also have an old Mac Pro on El Capitan. OS X and Lightroom were taking several minutes to get up and running. When the price of 1TB SSDs started to drop, I put one in as my Mac Pro boot drive, and that changed everything. Both the system and Lightroom now come up in seconds, not minutes. I didn't change the drives containing my photos, they're still on 7200 RPM hard drives in the other bays. But just changing the Mac Pro boot drive to an SSD removed the startup delays and the system is snappier overall.

The lack of graphics acceleration you mentioned probably has no effect on the startup time, but putting a newer graphics card in my old Mac Pro gave the Develop module a much more satisfying level of responsiveness.
 
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I was thinking video of the startup, rather than a screenshot. I agree a screenshot wouldn't help! :)

Ferguson said:
I would be extremely surprised if they came from the folders themselves as opposed to the catalog. They show up even if the drive is not mounted, don't they?
Click to expand...

They do, but it has to check whether the photos are 'found' and I've seen that be v slow in the past, but again, I think it's unlikely to be the cause on local storage. I've also seen it with ultra-large smart collections.
 
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Victoria Bampton said:
They do, but it has to check whether the photos are 'found' and I've seen that be v slow in the past, but again, I think it's unlikely to be the cause on local storage. I've also seen it with ultra-large smart collections.
Click to expand...
As a great believer in data, I ran a process monitor and recorded every file access. This applies only to windows, but it does not.

The short answer is we are both right. Sort of.

I shut down lightroom first with the grid display up, a small folder with a half dozen or so images, in it in the grid display, and the folder panel shown. Started a monitor of every file accessed in my folders.

It accessed the folder directory (itself) of each folder visible, it did not access any folders that were not visible (e.g. I have folders by year, and 2017 was expanded -- it showed each year once, but no dates within any year other than 2017, where it showed one access for each folder (day) inside of it).

It did not access any images inside of any folder except the one shown in the grid display. At all, not even an existence check. So very large numbers of images out there cause extremely little IO, they heavy hit is all done against the catalog. A large number of folders visible in the folder panel causes some IO, but in the grand scheme of things not all that much as you cannot fit that many folders on one screen.

The images in the grid display were only accessed if visible. I tried this again with a folder with 200+ images, and it only touched the dozen or so shown on the screen when it opened the grid. So the total images within a folder have little effect on open speed (assuming previews already built, I do not know if it builds only visible or all).

But... it is clearly using multiple queries against SQL for the folder counts, and it clearly takes quite a while. I'm not at all sure why it does not do this as one big query, but this means there is an additional reason for having the catalog on fast disks, and with respect to startup, having it minimally expanded.

Again, windows, and LR CC 2015.10. Though I would heavily doubt that Mac would differ in this regard, that would imply a level of functional difference that would be surprising.

Incidentally, this was done with Process Monitor from SysInternals (now a Microsoft company). It's free and if you are a bit technically savvy you can learn a whole lot about how programs behave. Since it can measure ALL access including its own, it is real easy to have it run amok and lock up a system, so use it carefully with good filters. But it's really helpful. I don't know if there's a similar program on Mac.
 
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Conrad Chavez said:
So you have Lightroom on an SSD, but is your Mac system on an SSD? If not, that's a possible cause. I also have an old Mac Pro on El Capitan. OS X and Lightroom were taking several minutes to get up and running. When the price of 1TB SSDs started to drop, I put one in as my Mac Pro boot drive, and that changed everything. Both the system and Lightroom now come up in seconds, not minutes. I didn't change the drives containing my photos, they're still on 7200 RPM hard drives in the other bays. But just changing the Mac Pro boot drive to an SSD removed the startup delays and the system is snappier overall.

The lack of graphics acceleration you mentioned probably has no effect on the startup time, but putting a newer graphics card in my old Mac Pro gave the Develop module a much more satisfying level of responsiveness.
Click to expand...
LR is on a SSD for both MacPro's. My graphics cards seem to responds OK in the develop mode once LR is running. Photos are on 7200 RPM internal drives.
 
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Ferguson said:
As a great believer in data, I ran a process monitor and recorded every file access. This applies only to windows, but it does not.

The short answer is we are both right. Sort of.

I shut down lightroom first with the grid display up, a small folder with a half dozen or so images, in it in the grid display, and the folder panel shown. Started a monitor of every file accessed in my folders.

It accessed the folder directory (itself) of each folder visible, it did not access any folders that were not visible (e.g. I have folders by year, and 2017 was expanded -- it showed each year once, but no dates within any year other than 2017, where it showed one access for each folder (day) inside of it).

It did not access any images inside of any folder except the one shown in the grid display. At all, not even an existence check. So very large numbers of images out there cause extremely little IO, they heavy hit is all done against the catalog. A large number of folders visible in the folder panel causes some IO, but in the grand scheme of things not all that much as you cannot fit that many folders on one screen.

The images in the grid display were only accessed if visible. I tried this again with a folder with 200+ images, and it only touched the dozen or so shown on the screen when it opened the grid. So the total images within a folder have little effect on open speed (assuming previews already built, I do not know if it builds only visible or all).

But... it is clearly using multiple queries against SQL for the folder counts, and it clearly takes quite a while. I'm not at all sure why it does not do this as one big query, but this means there is an additional reason for having the catalog on fast disks, and with respect to startup, having it minimally expanded.

Again, windows, and LR CC 2015.10. Though I would heavily doubt that Mac would differ in this regard, that would imply a level of functional difference that would be surprising.

Incidentally, this was done with Process Monitor from SysInternals (now a Microsoft company). It's free and if you are a bit technically savvy you can learn a whole lot about how programs behave. Since it can measure ALL access including its own, it is real easy to have it run amok and lock up a system, so use it carefully with good filters. But it's really helpful. I don't know if there's a similar program on Mac.
Click to expand...

Thanks for all your replies. I may search for such a program for my Mac and monitor the process as you suggest.
 
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