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Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:29:10 +0200
From: Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.org>
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To: Edward Ruggeri <smallhand@crawblog.com>
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Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Slow performance as root over SSH?
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Edward Ruggeri wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> (This may actually be a question for the dtach people).
> 
> I've recently been using dtach (basically the detach function of
> screen) over SSH to instruct my freeBSD machine to perform long tasks
> even after I disconnect from it.  It's worked great: I run SSH and
> connect to my box, execute dtach to create a new session in which to
> execute a program, hit ctr-\ to detach the session from the terminal,
> and then I can close the SSH tunnel.
> 
> Recently, I figured to do this with portupgrade.  Now, I don't allow
> root login, so I log in as a user in the wheel group and use su.  Now,
> as root, I run: dtach -A portupgrade -a.  It starts working, but
> extremely slowly.  For instance, "portsnap fetch update" takes several
> minutes, whereas it normally is blazing fast when performed locally.
> I can still detach, exit root, and close the SSH tunnel.  I suppose
> this is probably a dtach performance issue?

Likely unrelated to either.  There is nothing that would make root 
perform any differently than other users, and dtach only affects the 
terminal handling and not any other aspect of the system.

Kris