# Bug #496 (DRb slow) **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [August 31, 2008, 12:34am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/bug-496-drb-slow/147320 "2008-08-31T00:34:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![sithadmin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/858c86/32.png) [@sithadmin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sithadmin)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2008, 12:34am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/bug-496-drb-slow/147320/1 "2008-08-31T00:34:13Z")
Since I don’t have access to Ruby-core, I’ll just post a couple observations here in the hope of giving someone a head start with this problem. I have experienced the same problem as the original poster (Hongli L.) i.e. a 5 second lag at start up using DRb.start\_service() on Ubuntu 7 & 8 so I did a simple test this afternoon. > require ‘drb’ > require ‘benchmark’ > > puts Benchmark.measure { DRb.start\_service() } This consistently yielded this sort of result iteration after iteration: 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 ( 5.020901) This implies that the delay (5 seconds in my case) is occurring outside of Benchmark’s scope i.e. in an external service. On a hunch, I turned off the Multicast DNS service discovery (AKA avahi-daemon) and re-ran the simple Benchmark. The results are now consistently like so: 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 ( 0.170901) Apparently, avahi-daemon is somehow involved in the delay and review of it’s configuration show what seem to be stub files. Upon further investigation, the Ubuntu systems that I have that were configured with Ubuntu-server (rather than Ubuntu-client) did not have avahi-daemon installed and/or running and these did not experience any start-up delay. Briefly, DRb.start\_service() and ubuntu-client systems with the avahi-daemon appear to interact poorly. I suspect the default configuration of the avahi-daemon but don’t had the time (presently) to investigate further. Regards all…