uneccessary file access

[Matthias]

Filezilla accesses on startup files on mount points that it does not need (and imho should not) access.

In my case it accesses a mount point that is auto-mounted. Sometimes this mount point is not available and accessing it just blocks. This problem occurred on first usage of filezilla. So there should be no need to do anything on the mount point.

I could also imagine that the problems arise with mountable media like USB sticks, etc.

I attached the output of strace.

Thanks.

[Matthias]

strace output

[Alexander Schuch]

I had a quick look in the output, but I did not see any unusual access. Can you please help and tell me which directories are accessed which should not be accessed?

(I can grep - I just need to know what to grep for.)

[Matthias]

It accesses /mnt/anger (which is an nfs share managed by autofs). This can be found on the last line of the file. Filezilla just stops when it gets there and waits forever.

[masc]

2 years open? what's the status. this is still an issue, really annoying.
my machine has 12 out of 16 drives sleeping. filezilla wakes them all up. takes ages to startup and wastes power.

[masc]

excerpt of blockdump while filezilla is starting

[masc]

filezilla is apprently perfoming stat on all root folders, no matter which local folder is active initially.
resolved for me by relocating all mountpoints away from root.

[Tim Kosse]

For every unexpanded directory visible in the local directory tree, FileZilla needs to scan the directory to figure out whether it has subdirectories in order to display (or not) the + next to the directory in the tree.

[masc]

Im neither having the local filetree enabled (I even forgot it exists) nor is my startup local directory the root (/) folder.
So strictly speaking there's no sane reason for filezilla to stat all root directories.

[Tim Kosse]

/ is always part of the directory tree as it's the root, regardless what the current directory is.

The local directory tree is always enabled, though not necessarily visible. Disabling the local directory tree when not visible would add a lot of complexity.

[masc]

disabling the logic of a hidden widget should be trivial.

however.
what actually does add complexity and annoyance is having a mostly useless empty folder indication (plus sign).
it's a bag of hurt in specific usecases like remote network shares (pointed out years ago, see above) and also drives sleeping.

that's why sane file browsers like nautilus/GNOME or finder/OSX don't do it.

so the proper solution is fairly simple and also removes complexity:
display a plus sign for each folder, drop the inefficient mass-stating.