[PD] long startup time (watchdog warnings) and most externals fail to load

[Renato via Pd-list]

On Thu, 12 Jun 2014 17:40:03 +0200
Renato <rennabh at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi, I have some problems with pd on archlinux x86_64: they occur both
> with pd vanilla 0.45.5 (from official repositories) and pd-extended
> 0.43.4 (from AUR) - though it's the latter I'd like to use, so future
> outputs are to be considered from pd-extended 0.43.4
> 
> When I start it from terminal I get lots of "watchdog: signaling pd"
> lines, and it takes about 2 minutes to start the gui, at which point
> those watchdog warnings stop. Here's the output from terminal:
> 
> $ pdextended -verbose -noprefs
> Pd-0.43.4 ("extended") compiled 13:47:25 Jun 11 2014
> port 5401
> TCL_LIBRARY="/usr/lib/pd-extended/lib/tcl/library"
> TK_LIBRARY="/usr/lib/pd-extended/lib/tk/library"   wish8.6
> "/usr/lib/pd-extended/tcl//pd-gui.tcl" 5401 priority 6 scheduling
> enabled. Waiting for connection request... priority 8 scheduling
> enabled. /usr/lib/pd-extended/bin/pd-watchdog
> watchdog: signaling pd...
> watchdog: signaling pd...
> [...]
> watchdog: signaling pd...
> ... connected


I think I somewhat narrowed down the problem. Disregarding the
externals, which I think is an unrelated problem, I think the problem
is with the communication between the wathchdog and gui processes. I've
added a loadbang to the sinewave example patch, and this reproduces the
sine wave on my speakers almost immediately:

$ pd -jack -noprefs -verbose -nogui sinewave.pd
input channels = 2, output channels = 2
Pd-0.45.5 ("") compiled 15:09:54 Jun 11 2014
tried /home/renato/tmp/sinewave.pd and succeeded
input channels = 2, output channels = 2
verbose(4): JACK: started server as 'pure_data_0'
priority 6 scheduling enabled.
priority 8 scheduling enabled.
/usr/lib/pd/bin/pd-watchdog
opened 0 MIDI input device(s) and 0 MIDI output device(s).
input channels = 2, output channels = 2
^CPd: signal 2

to be more precise, it stalls for fractions of a second on the first
"input channels" line, then the next lines ("verbose(4)...") appear
together with the sound. It probably waits for the watchdog process to
launch right?

Instead if I take out the -nogui option, I get the output from the
precedent mail, with those watchdog warnings for about 2 minutes, then
the gui starts and the sine wave comes. All this with vanilla 0.45.5.

So where should I be looking at now to further investigate the problem?
Any ideas?

cheers,
renato