Slow launching - slow lookup in libSystem.B.dylib

Question

Hi,
In the past week or so, I have noticed that python is launching very slowly in Terminal. I turned on the DYLD_ environment variables to see what was going on, and consistently the problem appears to be lookups in libSystem.B.dylib. Here are the statistics printed by dld:
total time: 34.1 milliseconds (100.0%)
total images loaded: 5 (3 used prebinding)
total images loading time: 0.4 milliseconds (1.4%)
total rebase fixups: 34
total rebase fixups time: 0.0 milliseconds (0.0%)
total binding fixups: 1,564
total binding fixups time: 33.5 milliseconds (98.2%)
total bindings lazily fixed up: 2 of 423
total notify time time: 0.0 milliseconds (0.0%)
total init time time: 0.0 milliseconds (0.0%)
total hinted binary tree searches: 19
total unhinted binary tree searches: 1218
After that a bunch of lookups into the standard C library are done, and the slowdown occurs somewhere around here:
dyld: bind: python:_fread$lazy_ptr = libSystem.B.dylib:_fread, *0x001096d8 = 0x9001aae0
dyld: bind: python:_fclose$lazy_ptr = libSystem.B.dylib:_fclose, *0x0010968c = 0x90015780
dyld: bind: python:_memmove$lazy_ptr = libSystem.B.dylib:_memmove, *0x00109734 = 0x901313a0
dyld: bind: python:___maskrune$lazy_ptr = libSystem.B.dylib:___maskrune, *0x001096b8 = 0x900afa90
dyld: bind: python:_memchr$lazy_ptr = libSystem.B.dylib:_memchr, *0x0010972c = 0x90029cc0
dyld: bind: python:___error$lazy_ptr = libSystem.B.dylib:___error, *0x001096b4 = 0x90001d80
dyld: bind: python:_ferror$lazy_ptr = libSystem.B.dylib:_ferror, *0x001096f0 = 0x90032d00
dyld: bind: python:_strerror$lazy_ptr = libSystem.B.dylib:_strerror, *0x00109688 = 0x9003b920
dyld: bind: python:_setlocale$lazy_ptr = libSystem.B.dylib:_setlocale, *0x001096d4 = 0x900020bc
dyld: bind: python:_strdup$lazy_ptr = libSystem.B.dylib:_strdup, *0x001096c4 = 0x90017a60
dyld: bind: python:_nl_langinfo$lazy_ptr = libSystem.B.dylib:_nl_langinfo, *0x001096d0 = 0x90068b68
dyld: bind: python:___tolower$lazy_ptr = libSystem.B.dylib:___tolower, *0x00109738 = 0x900af940
What is strange is that after a reboot, or a reinstall of python from source, the slowdown disappears for a day or so, then reappears.
Does anyone have any ideas as to why this is happening?
Dual G5 2GHz   Mac OS X (10.4.6)  

Answer 1

Can't help with your problem; however, you might get a better response in the Unix forum at http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=735.