Very slow start-up times of Mathematica

Questions
1

I’m using Mathematica 13 on Fedora Linux. The start-up time is routinely three to four minutes. This is a powerful multi-core workstation with plenty of RAM. The license is handled by a license server. Can anyone suggest why just starting up takes so long?

I saw that you can get timing information from the front end with the command

FE`Evaluate[FEPrivate`$StartTimes] // Column

The result is

{
 {"Initializing kernel connections..." -> 0.14},
 {"Initializing cell styles..." -> 109.34},
 {"Initializing fonts..." -> 109.48},
 {"Initializing menus..." -> 109.48},
 {"Initializing defaults notebook..." -> 109.86},
 {"Initializing defaults clipboards..." -> 109.92},
 {"Initializing internal preferences..." -> 109.93},
 {"Initializing kernels..." -> 109.98},
 {"Opening Welcome Screen..." -> 199.59},
 {"Initializing toolbars..." -> 201.04},
 {"Preloading Favorites..." -> 201.3},
 {"Handling CommandLineOptions..." -> 201.3},
 {"Opening Files..." -> 201.3},
 {"Do Startup Action..." -> 201.3},
 {"Closing Splash Screen..." -> 201.3},
 {"Finished" -> 201.3}
}

which seems to mean that “Initializing kernel connections…” and “Initializing kernels…” are taking about 90 seconds each. As far as I know, all kernel-related preferences are at default values. Is there anything else I can do to figure out what’s going on?

2

Initializing kernel connections…->0.469
Initializing cell styles…->0.641
Initializing fonts…->0.922
Initializing menus…->0.922
Initializing defaults notebook…->1.094
Initializing defaults clipboards…->1.406
Initializing internal preferences…->1.422
Initializing kernels…->1.656
Opening Welcome Screen…->4.844
Initializing toolbars…->4.844
Preloading Favorites…->5.188
Handling CommandLineOptions…->5.188
Opening Files…->5.188
Do Startup Action…->5.188
Closing Splash Screen…->5.906
Finished->5.906

In an similar case, after update to vs 13., many issues got straight after deleting all Mathematica folders in
C:\Users\me\AppData and C:\ProgramData
that held data from older installations. If deleted, they will be created from scratch at start.

Another timing issue is a device, that generates read errors and try re-reads until success. But I think, floppy read times are over, generally, but net connections still work with this kind of protocol.

Especially in Linux it is essential that the MathLink protocol between GUI kernel and the working kernels is not delayed by security checks, since it goes via IP adresses as far as I understand it.

Roland Franzius

3

I quit Mathematica, deleted ~/.Mathematica and ~/.Wolfram, and restarted. It still took two minutes for “Initializing kernel connections” and over two minutes for “Initializing kernels”.

4

With Linux, I suppose, you have a user directory somewhere over the net?

5

All file systems involved (/ and /home) are local. They’re on an SSD installed in this workstation. No Mathematica global or user files are stored on any network file system.

6

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7

In this case I install a second identical drive, install Linux , without touching the first drive, best by disabling it in the bios, otherwise not installing a common grub but sticking with boot selection by F12.

Then install Mathematica, in most cases this worked without a new activation. But even without activation any hardware or software configuration induced problem in the timing of the startup sequence will exhibit .

For me, mostly net and security settings in Linux in effect forced a new installation because erroneous settings often are not repairable without finally to make the start sequence to hang forever.

Especially the network security and mode setting in Ubuntu are a puzzle I have not solved until 22.04 when the net problems sudenly disappeared.