# Rails is slow to load

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-is-slow-to-load/192743>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [August 4, 2010, 8:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-is-slow-to-load/192743 "2010-08-04T20:49:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![eric2323223](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/7c8e57/32.png) [@eric2323223](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/eric2323223)\
**Post date:** [August 4, 2010, 8:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-is-slow-to-load/192743/1 "2010-08-04T20:49:47Z")

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Hi,

I was just wondering if this was normal or not.

I was running ruby 1.8.7 with rails 3 - rc. (Currently trying 1.9.2-  
rc2 but the same problem)  
It takes rails a while to load. (a while as in 10-15 seconds)  
It will take a while before I can use the console , or before running  
a test or starting up the server.

This doesn’t seem normal to me when I watch some screencasts.  
If this is not normal behaviour, how can I figure out the source of  
the problem?

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**Author:** ![eric2323223](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/7c8e57/32.png) [@eric2323223](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/eric2323223)\
**Post date:** [August 4, 2010, 8:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-is-slow-to-load/192743/2 "2010-08-04T20:54:44Z")

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> This doesn’t seem normal to me when I watch some screencasts.  
> If this is not normal behaviour, how can I figure out the source of  
> the problem?

Maybe they edited their videos to prevent wasting time watching rails  
load?

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**Author:** ![eric2323223](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/7c8e57/32.png) [@eric2323223](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/eric2323223)\
**Post date:** [August 5, 2010, 10:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-is-slow-to-load/192743/3 "2010-08-05T10:25:49Z")

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For comparison, from typing script/server to having a running instance  
of mongrel hosting out a rails app on my machine takes ~2 seconds.

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**Author:** ![eric2323223](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/7c8e57/32.png) [@eric2323223](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/eric2323223)\
**Post date:** [August 5, 2010, 10:37am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-is-slow-to-load/192743/4 "2010-08-05T10:37:32Z")

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Well on my Dual Core MacMini running Ruby 1.8.7 and Rails 2.3.2 going  
from “ruby script/console” to getting the prompt takes around 9  
seconds.

This delay seems to be manifest across all the rails tasks. “rake  
test” seems to take an age to get running, between 3 to 5 seconds  
before it starts to event set up the test.

In production this is not a problem as the application very rarely has  
to restart, but it is a bit of a pig for testing.

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**Author:** ![eric2323223](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/7c8e57/32.png) [@eric2323223](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/eric2323223)\
**Post date:** [August 4, 2010, 9:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-is-slow-to-load/192743/5 "2010-08-04T21:16:08Z")

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That did cross my mind, but I was just wondering though.  
Mostly because it didn’t look as though the transition from running  
the command to the actual test running wasn’t edited.

But oh well.

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**Author:** ![eric2323223](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/7c8e57/32.png) [@eric2323223](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/eric2323223)\
**Post date:** [August 5, 2010, 3:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-is-slow-to-load/192743/6 "2010-08-05T15:34:56Z")

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The MacMini runs OSX

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![eric2323223](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/7c8e57/32.png) [@eric2323223](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/eric2323223)\
**Post date:** [August 5, 2010, 3:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-is-slow-to-load/192743/7 "2010-08-05T15:29:40Z")

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Hi,

can you tell us what is your OS ?  
MS-Windows ruby VM is VERY much slower than Nix or OSX ones…

you can also try to use the Thin server instead of Mongrel :  
[http://code.macournoyer.com/thin/](http://code.macournoyer.com/thin/)

It’s very simple :  
“gem install thin”  
“thin start” from your project folder

let us know 🙂

On 5 août, 10:36, Peter H. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![eric2323223](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/7c8e57/32.png) [@eric2323223](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/eric2323223)\
**Post date:** [August 5, 2010, 3:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-is-slow-to-load/192743/8 "2010-08-05T15:38:08Z")

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Eric Y. wrote:

> This doesn’t seem normal to me when I watch some screencasts.  
> If this is not normal behaviour, how can I figure out the source of  
> the problem?

It may simply be your hardware/OS combination…

At work, an Ubuntu VM on top of Win7, 1 core of a Core2Duo, 2.5GHz, 1 GB  
RAM allocated, ruby 1.8.7, rails 2.3.8; starts up in about 4 seconds

Same machine, Windows 7 Enterprise, the other core, same ruby and rails  
and app; starts in about 7 seconds (ruby + windows = yuck)

At home, Ubuntu 10.04 on a Phenom II X4 940, 8GB RAM, same ruby and  
rails and app, its about 2 seconds.

As always, YMMV.