Rstudio slow to index large network locations

[terrysgarner]

I've been running into an issue recently where Rstudio has been very slow to respond when asked to autocomplete the name of a file stored on a mapped network drive.

This is reproduced reliably by asking Rstudio to autocomplete a file name or a directory, then asking it to perform any other function. I can ask the autocomplete to complete a file name in the script editor and then simply press in the console window and Rstudio will hang for several minutes.

When I press ctrl+backtick (ctrl+`) "get_completions" appears to be the major culprit, though at other times, "check_for_external_edit" appears to take a long time as well. I'm not sure on how inter-dependent these functions are, so I can't necessarily split the problem between the two of these.

Using R through the windows terminal (Rterm) rather than Rstudio, autocomplete is instant in the same network location, however there have been other isolated problems reported with access times on the network drive.

This problem has started recently on a drive which was previously working perfectly and does not occur when autocompleting a non-network drive from the same machine. The only change which might contribute is an increase in the size of the network drive (an NFS share from my institution), which suggests some kind of issue with indexing large network drives may be at play, although I cannot pin point the exact start time of the problem with the time the size of the network drive was increased.

Similar issues in the community appear to me to be connected to this:

RStudio Desktop slow and laggy when project is on a network drive

Hey @kevinushey, I have similar issues, i.e. sluggishness of RStudio while working in Projects on a network drive. A few things: Not using git, and no hidden git files Running the newest Rstudio daily build 1.2.862 right now Windows 7 My Project is on the network drive I mainly have issues in 3 places: Using the File pane both for the first time and for general navigation is slow, and I get the spinning wheel a lot Executing code often results in the Console just sitting there, with no red Stop sign (Using CTRL+ backtick I see "console_input" as the likely culprit) and then finally it all executes at once really quickly (meaning the R code itself wasn't the slow part, and RStudio was pr…

Are there performance problems with having package library on a network drive?

I've just started a new job with a governemnt agency and I'm in the middle of getting all my software and tools configured. I haven't worked in a controlled IT environment before so I'm trying to figure out the best way to get everything installed. One issue I've run into is that I don't have permission to modify files on my local machine, but rather I have a network drive assigned to me that I have full read/write permissions on. IT installed R and RStudio locally for me, but I can't install packages to my machine. For now, I've been installing packages to a library on the network drive and pointed .libPaths() to that location. Are there known performance issues with having libraries locat…

Running Windows 10 - 64
R 4.0.2
Rstudio 1.3.959

[kevinushey]

Thank you for taking the time to file this! I think this would be worth filing on our official bug tracker, at Issues · rstudio/rstudio · GitHub -- would you be willing to do so?

@terrysgarner

This problem has started recently on a drive which was previously working perfectly and does not occur when autocompleting a non-network drive from the same machine. The only change which might contribute is an increase in the size of the network drive (an NFS share from my institution), which suggests some kind of issue with indexing large network drives may be at play, although I cannot pin point the exact start time of the problem with the time the size of the network drive was increased.

It sounds plausible that RStudio is getting locked up attempting to list files for completion; perhaps it is over-aggressively attempting to list files, or is doing so recursively when it should not be.

It would also be helpful to know what version of RStudio you're using, and whether the issue is resolved in the preview release.