terrible cloning performance for user, not root

[Simon King]

> On 4 Jan 2015, at 08:09, Lasse Kliemann <lasse.kliemann at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> on several of my virtual servers, cloning within the filesystem (no network)
> gives reasonable performance as root, but absolutely breaks down as a normal
> user. for example, cloning the python repository takes 20 seconds as root
> but something between 3 to 10 minutes as normal user. i tried to figure out
> any differences in the configuration user vs. root (ulimit, quota), but to
> no avail; there appear to be no differences. also i could not find another
> application showing the same performance difference, in particular git,
> rsync, and tar work fine. i also tested different distributions (latest
> ubuntu and centos in particular), and they all show the same problem. i
> already sent a request to the vserver provider, but since hg is the only
> application showing this problem so far, i am pessimistic about their
> ability or willingness to resolve it.
> 
> could anyone give a hint what to look out for? anyone noticed anything
> similar before? thanks a lot.
> 

You could try adding "--profile" and "--verbose" flags when cloning, and then comparing the output.

Hope that helps,

Simon