[kelix]

I was surprised to learn that a substantial speed boost could be had by running the Developer Tools installer included with Mac OS X on a second CD. It turns out that the bulk, if not all, of the acceleration comes from the installer performing an "Optimizing System Performance" operation -- essentially, the installer "prebinds" objects in the system and applications, locking them into a form where the can be executed most efficiently.
Interestingly, you don't actually have to run the Dev Tools Installer to get this speed boost -- you can run it any time you wish by typing "sudo update_prebinding -root /" at the command line. After installing a slew of new Cocoa applications, for example, you may want to run this operation to prebind their objects (in some cases this may have been done already -- in others, the way an application is designed may prevent this from having any effect) and optimize them.
----------------
Hope this helps! worked for me!!!

after running that command i get -

Apr 06 19:52:24 update_prebinding[256] Start of update_prebinding
Apr 06 19:52:24 update_prebinding[256] Search system for executables/libraries that also need changing
Apr 06 19:52:27 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Apr 06 19:52:31 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Apr 06 19:52:39 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Apr 06 19:52:44 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Apr 06 19:52:46 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Apr 06 19:52:51 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Apr 06 19:52:58 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Segmentation fault

------------------------------------------

anyone know how to solve this?

[Kosmo]

it found 832 files that needed updating-prebinding...doing it now. cool! thanks for the tip

Kosmo

[gorgonzola]

Amazing results!

After it's done, launch OmniWeb, then once it's done, quit, and then launch it again -- extremely fast compared to before.

Everyone should run this. I had 800 files that needed to be prebound.

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it's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything

[Kosmo]

Here's a small clipping :

Apr 06 20:03:38 update_prebinding[276] Prebinding files (20 of 832)
Apr 06 20:03:44 update_prebinding[276] Prebinding files (40 of 832)
Apr 06 20:03:58 update_prebinding[276] Prebinding files (60 of 832)
/usr/bin/update_prebinding: file is not prebound: /usr/lib/libkdb5.3.0.dylib
previous message occurred when prebinding /usr/lib/libkdb5.3.0.dylib
/usr/bin/update_prebinding: file is not prebound: /usr/lib/libkadm5clnt.4.0.dylib
previous message occurred when prebinding /usr/lib/libkadm5clnt.4.0.dylib
/usr/bin/update_prebinding: file is not prebound: /usr/libexec/kadmind4
previous message occurred when prebinding /usr/libexec/kadmind4
Apr 06 20:03:59 update_prebinding[276] Prebinding files (80 of 832)
Apr 06 20:04:06 update_prebinding[276] Prebinding files (100 of 832)


Kosmo

[Scrod]

I had over 1,300 files could be prebound. Unfortunately, I got the same errors as Kosmo, so I'm not sure the command was successful.

[foobars]

Apr 06 20:07:01 update_prebinding[350] Prebinding files
There are 1096 total files that must be re-prebound.

Woah! This does seem to speed load times for those apps I've installed since I updated and installed the dev tools.

[Scrod]

Hmmm.. Interesting. After using that command, Mail.app is now bringing up that dialog box that people were mentioning that asks me if I want it to save my password in the keychain. And this is without EVER installing the 4L5 update, keep in mind.

[Kosmo]

G4 TiBook 400, 384MB RAM
OS X K78

Sample

Before running script

IE = 8 bounces
iTunes = 11 bounces
Mail = 8 bounces

After running script

IE = 4 bounces
iTunes = 8 bounces
Mail = 3.5 bounces

not too bad, wonder what else has changed...

Kosmo

[gorgonzola]

Frankly, this should be in a weekly cron script -- the user shouldn't have to prebind the files manually, especially since the significant boosts in app launch are obviously desirable to everyone.

I'll be writing Apple about this.

------------------
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------------------
it's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything

When I run this script, it freezes while scanning for files. When it first starts, the hard drive has a lot of access and things are responsive. After about 5 minutes, hard drive access becomes intermittent and the computer is locked (force quit doesn't work) and I have to then restart.

Does any one else have this problem, or have any idea how to fix it?

[pdot]

Doesn't prebinding use up some system resources if you're not using the program that is prebound?.

[bitfly]

No speed boost for me after the prebinds in 4K78.

[jagga]

I had like 1068 files needing to be prebound. But after doing that, I can see no boost in speed/responsiveness.

just my experience.

Jagga

[Jim Paradise]

Well, I'm running that line right now, and it seems to be working. I'm only at 40 of 877 files, and I'll post later if it speeds anything up

[lextek]

How do I enter this command? I tried using the Terminal utilitiy. And got the message command not recognized. I'm still used to control panels.

thanks,
Bob

I can verify that this has significantly sped up IE 5.1 in terms of responsiveness. The spinning ball comes up far less frequently, and not at all while downloading a file!
I can command-` much quicker to switch between open windows. It is much closer in speed now to IE 5.0 in Classic. =)

I can verify that this has significantly sped up IE 5.1 in terms of responsiveness. The spinning ball comes up far less frequently, and not at all while downloading a file!
I can command-` much quicker to switch between open windows. It is much closer in speed now to IE 5.0 in Classic. =)

[godzappa]

Saw this command line earlier in the day but wanted to wait till I didnt have anything to do so I could close all apps and do it right as they say

872 or so files, took about 2 minutes on my pci 400 G4, I opened Mail app first, certainly faster, it took awhile to pick up my mail, then asked if I would allow mail on the keychain, which I allowed always.

I.E is also quite faster to load, still buggy and unresonsive but cant blame OSX for that

Next "project" for my will be deleating all the non english proj files, I hear it can free up 300 megs or so.

Love OSX

[zythemac]

www.macosrumors.com today posted this:





Friday, April 6

OS X Developer CD acceleration update Tips & Tricks

Recently, the OS X community was surprised to learn that a substantial speed boost could be had by running the Developer Tools installer included with Mac OS X on a second CD. It turns out that the bulk, if not all, of the acceleration comes from the installer performing an "Optimizing System Performance" operation -- essentially, the installer "prebinds" objects in the system and applications, locking them into a form where the can be executed most efficiently.

Interestingly, you don't actually have to run the Dev Tools Installer to get this speed boost -- you can run it any time you wish by typing "sudo update_prebinding -root /" at the command line. After installing a slew of new Cocoa applications, for example, you may want to run this operation to prebind their objects (in some cases this may have been done already -- in others, the way an application is designed may prevent this from having any effect) and optimize them.


Don't know who wrote this first, but someone should have given credit to the other.

[I'mDaMac]

I ran the command and ended up pre-binding 982 files. It took about 3-4 minutes from start to finish. Unfortunately, I report no noticeable improvement or speed increase.

[batguano2000]

I read this earlier tonight on MacOS Rumours, well before the post showed up here.

So I guess we know in which direction the credit should have went.

------------------
_________________
Live from the GLRS
The Man From D.A.D

[escher]

Originally posted by Kosmo:
it found 832 files that needed updating-prebinding...

That's funny. I had 832 files that could be prebound also.

NB: This optimization was posted on MOSR earlier this afternoon. It's amazing how quickly news like this travels across the Ether.

Waste 10 minutes while the prebinding process runs its course.... save a whole bunch of time when starting apps later....

Escher

------------------
"The only laptop computer that's useful is the one you have with you."
Let's have a 3 lbs sub-PowerBook with AirPort and 5 hour battery life now!

[MacAgent]

Hmm, I have the Developer Tools *AND* 4L5 and after doing this, OmniWeb launches in 21 bounces instead of 59. Pretty cool.

------------------
d

[escher]

Holy guacamole! This is nuts!

On my Rev.A iMac/233 with 192MB of RAM, application startup times are affected as follows:

Before prebinding:
IE: 35 bounces
Eudora: 8 bounces
QT Player: 16 bounces
iTunes: 25 bounces

After prebinding:
IE: 15 bounces
Eudora: 7 bounces
QT Player: 14 bounces
iTunes: 17 bounces

It looks like this prebinding benefits applications that take a longer time to load to a much larger extent.

I'm overjoyed. Like a little boy who building a sand castle at the beach.

Escher

------------------
"The only laptop computer that's useful is the one you have with you."
Let's have a 3 lbs sub-PowerBook with AirPort and 5 hour battery life now!

Another update:

Window resizing is _far_ faster now. In both Internet Explorer and Finder. In windows that are not dynamically updated, it's just about real-time following the mouse. In windows (like these forums) which are dynamically updated, the lag is on the order of a few tenths of seconds, compared to probably about a full-second before.

In any case, this now makes the real-time updating USEFUL.

[undotwa]

i tell you, this command works... but that Optimizing System Performance installer thing is total BS. It's just like the 'cleaning up' which Classic installers do.



------------------
http://www.appleonlooker.com - your number one source for Mac OS X news!

[spectre]

Well I've done it on my Rev A iMac w/160mb of ram, on build 4L7, and I do notice a slight difference. For one things.. IE feels way faster now. It still has the damn spinning wheel quite often, but it loads pages much faster..

App launching is virtually the same. (it took a restart to get it working ok). but launching the app a second time almost feels faster then launching it a second time after doing this thing in the terminal. Resizing might be a bit faster, but everything else feels virtualy the same.

I'm gonna test OmniWeb to see if its any faster...

Ben

[FunandBlindness]

You know, I forgot I ran this today, went out had a few beers and just got home about an hour ago. 5 mins ago I was like.. X is running really smooth tonight....YEAH. Omniweb and Mail seem to really benefit...overall performance much better.

[Gavin]

So far so good.

I think we found the OSX equivalent of rebuilding the desktop.

menus and file browsing are noticeably faster. I don't see a difference in app startup time.

[dbogdan]

Hey everybody... I ran the command "sudo update_prebinding -root/" and got the following response...[localhost:~] drb% sudo update_prebinding -root/We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local SystemAdministrator. It usually boils down to these two things: #1) Respect the privacy of others. #2) Think before you type.Password:Apr 07 05:25:53 update_prebinding[8802] Start of update_prebindingusage: prebind {-debug} {-verbose} {-root <dir>} (-pkgs (<pkg> <instroot> )* ) | (-files file1 file2 ...) Calls redo_prebinding on executables and libraries in dependency order -verbose: display additional status and warning messages -debug: don't actually try to redo the prebinding for any files -pkgs: specifies package/install root pairs of changed files that require prebinding to be redone. -root: specifies the directory to be searched for dependent libraries If neither -pkgs or -file is specified, all libraries and executables in -root are prebound.So what is this saying? I'm already running 4L7 on my iMac Summer Y2K with 512MG of RAM... is this command even necessary for me?As always, thanks in advance...

[dbogdan]

Hey everybody... I ran the command "sudo update_prebinding -root/" and got the following response...
[localhost:~] drb% sudo update_prebinding -root/

We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local SystemAdministrator. It usually boils down to these two things:

#1) Respect the privacy of others. #2) Think before you type.Password:Apr 07 05:25:53 update_prebinding[8802] Start of update_prebinding
usage: prebind {-debug} {-verbose} {-root <dir>}
(-pkgs (<pkg> <instroot> )* ) | (-files file1 file2 ...) Calls redo_prebinding on executables and libraries in dependency order -verbose: display additional status and warning messages -debug: don't actually try to redo the prebinding for any files -pkgs: specifies package/install root pairs of changed files that require prebinding to be redone. -root: specifies the directory to be searched for dependent libraries If neither -pkgs or -file is specified, all libraries and executables in -root are prebound.So what is this saying? I'm already running 4L7 on my iMac Summer Y2K with 512MG of RAM... is this command even necessary for me?As always, thanks in advance...

[Judge_Fire]

Right after running the command and updating 1130 occurrences, the transparency in my Audion PR3 faces broke and now shows a black rectangle in those areas.

Does yours work?

Judge_Fire

BTW. The minimized terminal scrolling in the dock while updating had a geeky cool appeal to it

[dbogdan]

Damn those cut-and-paste formatting bugs!!! I hope you can all make sense of the text. Even with the line endings, the message is cryptic to me... Am I being prompted to proceed or what??

[noliv]

Originally posted by Judge_Fire:
the transparency in my Audion PR3 faces broke and now shows a black rectangle in those areas.

transparency in audion doesn't work in "thousands of colors"... put it back to millions. (I may be wrong but I read this on the fora)

[jamesa]

Originally posted by cs:
after running that command i get -

Apr 06 19:52:24 update_prebinding[256] Start of update_prebinding
Apr 06 19:52:24 update_prebinding[256] Search system for executables/libraries that also need changing
Apr 06 19:52:27 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Apr 06 19:52:31 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Apr 06 19:52:39 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Apr 06 19:52:44 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Apr 06 19:52:46 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Apr 06 19:52:51 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Apr 06 19:52:58 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Segmentation fault

A segmentation fault occurs when your program tries to access memory locations that haven't been allocated for the program's use. ie very bad.

[[email protected]]

how can i do that? no way for me, logged as root, copied and pasted command and all it did is text

[localhost:~] root# sudo update_prebinding -root
Apr 07 12:22:25 update_prebinding[308] Start of update_prebinding
usage: prebind {-debug} {-verbose} {-root <dir>}
(-pkgs (<pkg> <instroot> )* ) | (-files file1 file2 ...)
Calls redo_prebinding on executables and libraries in dependency order
-verbose: display additional status and warning messages
-debug: don't actually try to redo the prebinding for any files
-pkgs: specifies package/install root pairs of changed files that require
prebinding to be redone.
-root: specifies the directory to be searched for dependent libraries
If neither -pkgs or -file is specified, all libraries and executables in -root are prebound.

thanx

[jamesa]

It slowed me down - I'm taking a hell of a lot more bounces to load apps than I was before doing it. O/W and iTunes especially - they now take forever.

I wonder if there is an un-pre-bind command?

[[email protected]]

okay the command is in this syntax

sudo update_prebinding -root /

had /of course/ bad spacing...
anyway thanx

[Lord Kronos]

I posted the same trick yesterday (before Mac OS Rumors ), and I noticed that you need to restart in order to get it to work properly, otherwise it seems to 'slow' things down a little.

This trick works better on slow macs and has (almost) no effect on fast ones.

------------------
"Ein kleiner Mensch stirbt - nur zum Schein"

[gorgonzola]

Note that the noticeable speed boost in app launching will occur after the second app launch and beyond. So basically, do the prebinding, then launch OmniWeb (and time it), and then immediately quit and launch it again (and time it). The second time is the new time; the first one will be as slow as before.

It's the second time that you'll always be getting though.

The improvements are very noticeable, and this is indeed very similar to rebuilding the desktop: sometimes it can make a world of difference, sometimes it doesn't do anything at all.

------------------
the oddball newsletter
------------------
it's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything

Originally posted by Dan Andersen:
When I run this script, it freezes while scanning for files. When it first starts, the hard drive has a lot of access and things are responsive. After about 5 minutes, hard drive access becomes intermittent and the computer is locked (force quit doesn't work) and I have to then restart.

Does any one else have this problem, or have any idea how to fix it?

i have the same problem, but it only takes about 30 seconds to start. no idea about how to work around it, yet. that's what i am looking for here....

Note that the noticeable speed boost in app launching will occur after the second app launch and beyond. So basically, do the prebinding, then launch OmniWeb (and time it), and then immediately quit and launch it again (and time it). The second time is the new time; the first one will be as slow as before.

couldn't this have anything to do with caching? i'm skeptical. but i'm going to do it anyway. i'll try to be back sometime with my results.

Placebo.

The update prebinding loads all the frameworks. It means that once it's done, if you launch an application, it will indeed be 'fast'

You need to reboot to see if it's REALLY different.

In my case, peanuts. the thing is as slow as it ever was.

okay, i couldn't get it to complete. i ran it twice, and both times the result was an "Out Of Memory" message. strange with OS X's dynamic memory allocation, and my 512 MB RAM.

oh well. but i did a little test on app launch time before running this.
IE - 20; 9; 7
System Prefs - 3; 2; 2

there is caching involved, and perhaps the amazing speed increase you've noticed is due to this, and this only.

[kamprath]

What exactlly is the prebinding mechanism doing?

Michael

------------------

[packley]

Originally posted by gnosis_blue:
okay, i couldn't get it to complete. i ran it twice, and both times the result was an "Out Of Memory" message. strange with OS X's dynamic memory allocation, and my 512 MB RAM.

oh well. but i did a little test on app launch time before running this.
IE - 20; 9; 7
System Prefs - 3; 2; 2

there is caching involved, and perhaps the amazing speed increase you've noticed is due to this, and this only.

I got an out of memory error, too. I'd be happy to post a system profiler report if anyone thinks it might be helpful

[gorgonzola]

Caching is involved, but my second launch time after prebinding was faster than my second launch time before prebinding. So while caching is involved, prebinding also offers a noticeable speedup on my iMac.

------------------
the oddball newsletter
------------------
it's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything

[sprynmr]

Originally posted by cs:
after running that command i get -

Apr 06 19:52:24 update_prebinding[256] Start of update_prebinding
Apr 06 19:52:24 update_prebinding[256] Search system for executables/libraries that also need changing
Apr 06 19:52:27 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Apr 06 19:52:31 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Apr 06 19:52:39 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Apr 06 19:52:44 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Apr 06 19:52:46 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Apr 06 19:52:51 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Apr 06 19:52:58 update_prebinding[256] Scanning disk
Segmentation fault

I got this same problem. I hope it's not as bad as someone indicated. What is your system setup? How is your OS X setup? Partitioning etc.

Anyone else have this problem>>????


------------------
M. Robert
Fredonia State College
MultiMedia

I can't get this to work. "unlimit" before doing sudo has no effect. It cranks away for about 15 minutes and then I get the following.
Apr 07 17-09-15 update_prebinding[269] Scanning disk-*** malloc[269]- error- Can't allocate region-objc- NSPathStore2- failed -- out of memory(NSPathStore2, 2016)-

Any ideas what is going on here?