A better or worse update_prebinding method?

[ElDiabloConCaca]

So I'm finally trying out the old "sudo update_prebinding -root /" trick, and it ran successfully. I think my apps are loading about a bounce quicker, but the report at the end of the run was telling me it only updated 1 prebinding or something. So, I go poking through the man pages for update_prebinding, and find this interesting tidbit: if you do a "sudo update_prebinding -root / -force" it will FORCE ALL PREBINDINGS to be updated. "Hallelujah!" I scream... and I press enter. It runs through the prebinding update process again, a little slower, and reports that 844 out of 970 prebindings were updated. An 844% increase in updated prebindings -- so I start launching my typical apps I launch EVERY morning. They take even LONGER to load.

Well, let me explain -- I go through my dock and click on 5 apps every morning -- Explorer, Entourage, AIM, MSN and iTunes. They'll sit there and bounce a few secs normally, then launch. After the "super prebinding update" I just decribed, they sat there and bounced a lot longer than normal (like 15-20 secs) then, like someone shot them up with speed, they all launched within about 5 seconds of each other.

So my question is this... I thought prebindings were supposed to speed up application launches? I've only launched them once since doing this, so I'm expecting that on subsequent launches or after a restart or something I should see something along the lines of increased launch times with these applications.

Anyone else tried this? Are my applications simply taking longer to load the first time around?

[edX]

no, they should definitly launch faster after being properly prebound. i use xoptimizer (prebinding for dummies) and it works every time.
but a couple of things i will note. i never launch 5 apps at once. i launch 5 apps at times but i wait for each one. i also notice that all yours apps are internet tools. prebinding is not going to effect all the things they do to establish their network connections. also 3 or the 5 are m$ apps. i could comment on your bad taste but i won't the thing is m$ is known for adding a gazillion files all over the place. these may be the very apps that didn't get prebound for some reason. btw - a new version of office was just released yesterday in case you need it.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Well, after a restart, they launched faster... a LOT faster. Two or three bounces faster.

And I'll nod knowingly at your tongue biting on my crappy taste in applications... hehe... I'm not going to defend Microsoft in any way, nor will I bash them at this time. Let's just say I haven't experienced NEARLY as many problems as everyone else here. IE never crashes on me. Office runs like a charm, even on a dated G4/400 PCI machine. MSN I need to communicate with those friends of mine that are still stuck under Microsoft's iron fist -- still, it's never given me any problems.

Also, I ran the same test with non-internet tools -- iTunes, Office applications, Painter, Bryce, etc... with the same slow results until I restarted or logged out/in again. Weird.

I also noticed that prebinding "frees" up memory originally allocated by applications. Try it yourself -- see how much free memory you have before you update the prebindings, and again afterwards. There's a noticeable jump, like you just restarted or something.

[edX]

well, i prebind on a regular basis since i am constantly trying new software and moving things around. so i don't know how much memory i would gain at this point. one nice thing about prebinding that i have heard is that once you do it, it sticks unless you change the location of the app. I don't know how true this is. but i know that lately i have had to do minimal maintanence (at last).

it is interesting that you had to reboot. i have never had to do so with xoptimizer i don't think. also weird as you said that non net apps would take as long as net apps. but you got it to work and that is good news.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Well, with a normal prebinding update (like XOptimize does), I get immediate results concerning application launch time as well as releasing memory. That's "sudo update_prebinding -root /"

With the "super" prebinding update, I have to restart or relaunch applications a SECOND time in order to see the benefits... that's "sudo update_prebinding -root / -force"

Weird. Maybe the "forced" prebinding one prebinds some extra system files, and therefore the system needs to do some disk grinding before the results can be seen. Just an off-the-wall theory.