bug#7549: 23.2; emacs frozen while saving to USB-stick/slow disk (unfreezes after the write finishes)

[Arne Babenhauserheide]

Dear emacs developers, 

I=2019ve been using emacs as default editor on my OLPC with Gentoo booted
from USB stick (and it=2019s great having everything I need without having
to start a graphical environment!). 

There=2019s a major hindrance for me, though: When I save a file, emacs
freezes for a few seconds before I can continue to work (and C-x
C-s has become almost hardwired in my fingers :) ). I can just type on
and it will act on the keystrokes after unfreezing again, but it is
still disturbing my workflow quite a bit. 

My guess is that the reason for that are backup files and/or the log of
last accessed files (or similar). So I=2019d like to ask if it would be
possible to write that additional data asynchronously. 

The only other reason for the short freeze I can think of right now is
that emacs might force the disk to commit right now. My commit time for
the root disk is set to 30s, so normally a write should just go into
memory, taking almost zero time (and nano for example doesn=2019t show the
lag =2014 which doesn=2019t mean that I want to use nano for my editing; 
there=2019s
a whole world between emacs and nano).

Is there a way to fix the freezes without disabling session log and/or
backup files? 

Best wishes, 
Arne


In GNU Emacs 23.2.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu)
 of 2010-07-07 on fluss
configured using `configure  '--prefix=/usr' '--build=i686-pc-linux-gnu' 
'--host=i686-pc-linux-gnu' '--mandir=/usr/share/man' 
'--infodir=/usr/share/info' '--datadir=/usr/share' '--sysconfdir=/etc' 
'--localstatedir=/var/lib' '--program-suffix=-emacs-23' 
'--infodir=/usr/share/info/emacs-23' '--with-crt-dir=/usr/lib' '--with-sound' 
'--with-x' '--without-gconf' '--without-toolkit-scroll-bars' '--without-gif' 
'--with-jpeg' '--with-png' '--with-rsvg' '--without-tiff' '--with-xpm' 
'--without-xft' '--without-libotf' '--without-m17n-flt' '--with-x-toolkit=no' 
'--without-hesiod' '--without-kerberos' '--without-kerberos5' '--with-gpm' 
'--with-dbus' 'build_alias=i686-pc-linux-gnu' 'host_alias=i686-pc-linux-gnu' 
'CFLAGS=-march=geode -O2 -pipe' 'LDFLAGS=-Wl,-O1''

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: nil
  value of $LC_COLLATE: C
  value of $LC_CTYPE: nil
  value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil
  value of $LC_MONETARY: nil
  value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil
  value of $LC_TIME: nil
  value of $LANG: de_DE.UTF-8
  value of $XMODIFIERS: nil
  locale-coding-system: utf-8
  default enable-multibyte-characters: t

Major mode: Org

Minor modes in effect:
  shell-dirtrack-mode: t
  gpm-mouse-mode: t
  real-global-auto-complete-mode: t
  global-auto-complete-mode: t
  auto-complete-mode: t
  tooltip-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  menu-bar-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  auto-encryption-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  global-visual-line-mode: t
  visual-line-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t

Recent input:
ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC 
[ A ESC [ B ESC [ B ESC [ B ESC [ B ESC [ B ESC [ B 
ESC [ B ESC [ B ESC [ B ESC [ B D O N E SPC ESC [ C 
ESC [ C ESC [ C ESC [ C ESC [ C ESC [ C ESC [ C ESC 
[ C ESC [ C ESC [ C ESC [ C ESC [ C ESC [ C ESC [ C 
ESC [ C ESC [ C ESC [ C ESC [ C ESC [ C ESC [ C ESC 
[ C ESC [ C SPC =21d2 SPC o r g t DEL - t i m e r - s e 
t , SPC o r g - t i m e r - s t a r t C-o RET DEL ESC 
[ 3 ~ C-x C-s C-c C-x C-a ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC 
[ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A 
ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC 
[ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A 
ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC [ A ESC 
[ A ESC [ B ESC [ B ESC [ B ESC [ B ESC [ B ESC [ B 
ESC [ C ESC [ A ESC [ C ESC x r e p o r t - b u g TAB 
RET

Recent messages:
Wrote /home/arne/.emacs.d/private/org/emacs-plan.org
Waiting for process to die...(type C-g again to kill it instantly)
Waiting for process to die...done
Quit
Copied: Subtree(s) with 78 characters
Saving file /home/arne/.emacs.d/private/org/emacs-plan.org_archive...
Wrote /home/arne/.emacs.d/private/org/emacs-plan.org_archive
Cut: Subtree(s) with 78 characters
Subtree archived in file: ~/.emacs.d/private/org/emacs-plan.org_archive
Auto-saving...done

Load-path shadows:
~/.emacs.d/private/gnus hides /usr/share/emacs/23.2/lisp/gnus/gnus

Features:
(shadow sort mail-extr message idna ecomplete rfc822 mml mml-sec
mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mailabbrev nnheader gmm-utils wid-edit
mailheader canlock sha1 hex-util hashcash mail-utils warnings emacsbug
org-archive org-clock org-timer help-mode view log-edit pcvs-util
add-log vc vc-dispatcher tabify thingatpt vc-hg org-wl org-w3m org-vm
org-rmail org-mhe org-mew org-irc org-jsinfo org-infojs org-html org-exp
org-exp-blocks org-agenda org-info org-gnus org-bibtex org-bbdb
tramp-imap assoc tramp-gw tramp-fish tramp-smb tramp-cache tramp-ftp
tramp-cmds tramp auth-source gnus-util netrc shell comint ring
password-cache format-spec tramp-compat trampver bookmark pp t-mouse
server ispell activate-babenv activate-private-data private-basic
smtpmail sendmail regexp-opt saveplace activate-identica identica-mode
json url-http tls url-auth mail-parse rfc2231 rfc2047 rfc2045 qp
ietf-drums url-gw url url-proxy url-privacy url-expand url-methods
url-history mailcap longlines parse-time xml epa-file epa epg epg-config
activate-german-spelling activate-auto-complete auto-complete-config
auto-complete popup activate-markdown ezbl derived edmacro kmacro
url-cookie url-util url-parse url-vars mm-util mail-prsvr timezone
htmlize cl cl-19 type-break goto-chg activate-quick-note remember
org-remember org-datetree org byte-opt bytecomp byte-compile advice
help-fns advice-preload org-footnote org-src org-list org-faces
org-compat org-macs time-date noutline outline easy-mmode easymenu
allout ido activate-base site-gentoo w3m-load tex-site auto-loads
tooltip ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel x-win x-dnd tool-bar
dnd fontset image fringe lisp-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow
timer select scroll-bar mldrag mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu
font-core frame cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan
thai tai-viet lao korean japanese hebrew greek romanian slovak czech
european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese case-table epa-hook
jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev loaddefs button minibuffer faces
cus-face files text-properties overlay md5 base64 format env code-pages
mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable backquote
make-network-process dbusbind x multi-tty emacs)