Slow file system?

NickColeman

The very first thing I noticed when I switched to GrapheneOS was how slow the file system appears to be. For example, bringing up a file chooser dialog box (such as where to save a file) takes about 10 seconds before the dialog appears. In Pixel, it's almost instantaneous, 2-3 seconds at most. Upgrading YT in Morphe takes a good 15 to 20 minutes, in Pixel it was two to three minutes. Since it's the same processor in both cases, the thing that's changed is the file system so I'm blaming that.

This isn't a complaint, it's more curiosity. Is the file system doing more and better checks on its integrity and therefore slows down it's throughput. I don't know, that's why I'm writing this.

de0u

NickColeman The very first thing I noticed when I switched to GrapheneOS was how slow the file system appears to be. For example, bringing up a file chooser dialog box (such as where to save a file) takes about 10 seconds before the dialog appears.

I have not experienced this. Did it happen as soon as GrapheneOS was installed, or might it be related to some app that was installed?

de0u

de0u Did it happen as soon as GrapheneOS was installed, or might it be related to some app that was installed?

NickColeman As soon as it was installed. I noticed because I went to update YouTube via Morphe and it was taking so long that I initially thought Morphe had frozen.

My question was about the behavior of the system literally right after installation, before any apps are installed, especially before any apps were patched.

I don't think the described behavior is due to GrapheneOS itself. There have been some reports of slowdowns of apps that make a very large number of memory-allocator calls, because the GrapheneOS memory allocator is hardened. That hardening can be disabled on a per-app basis.

Developer-Dude

The only part of the filesystem slow for me is launching the Files app, which takes about 3-4 seconds. Started happening right after Android 16. Otherwise filesystem is fast as usual

NickColeman

As soon as it was installed. I noticed because I went to update YouTube via Morphe and it was taking so long that I initially thought Morphe had frozen.

BTW, it's a 7 Pro. I've just bought a 10 Pro XL and I'll be installing GrapheneOS. I'll take more notice of the before and after this time.

Developer-Dude

NickColeman how full is the phone storage?

MyIdentityIsntImportant

NickColeman Updating & installing apps is indeed generally slower on GrapheneOS compared to stock. The reason is that GOS uses ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation that compiles the apps fully at install time, whereas stock uses just-in-time (JIT) compilation for the apps as they are run. GOS's approach makes the install time longer, but it has the benefits of improved app performance, less battery usage, and improved security over the JIT approach of stock.

Maybe this explains things. Good luck on your privacy journey!

digest

I have also experienced extremely slow filesystem operations. On a fresh install of GOS on a pixel 10a I tried to delete a large backup folder of ₅ GB of small-medium files, using the default files app, which was extremely slow and failed in the middle of the operation multiple times only deleting some of the files. I had to start the deletion operation lots of times to completely remove the directory. Moving the files was basically the same experience, but it crashed the files app.

I think trying the same operations using the built-in terminal emulator was faster, but I will have to test it again to be sure. I may edit the post with the results.

de0u

digest On a fresh install of GOS on a pixel 10a I tried to delete a large backup folder of 5 GB of small-medium files, using the default files app, which was extremely slow and failed in the middle of the operation multiple times only deleting some of the files.

Interesting! If you do this again, it would be useful to record roughly how many files. Also, when the deletion "failed", what were the symptoms? Was an error message displayed?

digest

de0u If you do this again, it would be useful to record roughly how many files

It was an encrypted backup so there were thousands of somewhat small files, around 7000 I think and ranging from a few kilobytes to a few megabytes, in 256 separate folders. It's probably a standard way to encrypt large archives, but I don't know the name of the format.

de0u Also, when the deletion "failed", what were the symptoms?

Some of the folders containing the files were deleted and some weren't. From what I could tell, they were being deleted in a seemingly random order. I didn't check to see if there were files being deleted in random folders. I also didn't check if there were files that were partially deleted when it failed, but I doubt it.

I "resumed" the deletion by pressing delete on the top-most folder.

de0u Was an error message displayed?

No, there was no error. The notification that usually says progress was saying "0/1" and "Deleting files". There was a progress bar, but it was empty the entire time and had no progress or time counter.

I hope this can help.