Why are the command line utilities running so slowly on the Mac

command lineterminalunix

I have just noticed that command line utilities such as ls (/bin/ls), touch (/usr/bin/touch), cat (/bin/cat), etc. are very slow when I run them from Terminal or iTerm on my MacBook. For example:

  • ls'ing while in an empty directory takes 1 second (it also takes 1 second in a non-empty directory, both with lots of files or with a few files);

  • touch'ing a new file takes 1 second (it also takes 1 second to touch an existing file);

  • cat'ing an empty file takes 1 second (there is also a 1 second lag before anything happens when I cat a non-empty file).

I have tried to diagnose this in many ways but to no avail. I do not think this is a filesystem issue, since:

  • I have run Disk Utility and it reports no problems.

  • Everything seems to be working just fine in Finder, e.g. directory contents are shown instantaneously in Finder.

  • I installed GNU coreutils using Homebrew and tried using gls, gtouch, gcat, etc., and all of the operations I listed above happen instantaneously when run with the GNU version instead.

Any ideas on what could be going on? Any ideas on how to fix this?

EDIT: When I reboot the computer, or try a different user, these issues go away temporarily, but after a few minutes they seem to reappear again. Another strange thing that I noticed:

$ time date
Wed Jan 28 10:07:11 PST 2015

real    0m0.151s
user    0m0.001s
sys     0m0.003s

$ time date
Wed Jan 28 10:07:13 PST 2015

real    0m0.029s
user    0m0.001s
sys     0m0.002s

$ time date
Wed Jan 28 10:07:16 PST 2015

real    0m1.005s
user    0m0.001s
sys     0m0.002s

$ time date
Wed Jan 28 10:07:18 PST 2015

real    0m1.005s
user    0m0.001s
sys     0m0.002s

This happens for all the utilities I've tried, mkdir, scp, sftp, more, cat, etc.: The first time I run it after a reboot, it's medium-slow. The second time I run it, it's sorta-fast. All subsequent times I run it, it's slow.

Best Answer

I actually figured out the issue today. It was caused by a piece of anti-malware software called Sourcefire AMP (Advanced Malware Protection). All of my issues went away after I disabled/uninstalled it.

I'm guessing that it was doing something like putting a delay on things in /bin, /usr/bin, etc. for "security reasons"... I'm guessing the GNU tools were not delayed because they weren't in the "blacklisted" directories.

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