Help center real sluggish in 10.2

[Diji]

:confused: I have had Jagwire since Friday at 10:50pm; got it installed over a very used and possibly software confused iBook that I have been playing with every app available at sourceforge and have been generally pleased. One oddity, the help system seems to be extremely slow at first I thought I actually had a problem app but it eventually populates the window. I considered it an side effect of the crud I have installed onmy iBook, so I nuked it, started from scratch, complete software reload and the problem still exists. It takes forever, on the side it appears to have every help file it found on the drive, so I figured OK it takes a decade the first time but from here on it'll be fine. Nope, it takes less time than before but still way to long. Anyone have any ideas? Oddly I get the Beach ball as it thinks regarding a question and the app is locked unitl it finds something.

Love the improved snappiness of the interface it is noticibly faster in all other ways, anyone else experiencing this?

[Mikey-San]

Heh. It's not your iBook. Help Center has become fairly useless in 10.2, after becoming slower than frozen mud.

Apple seems to have dropped the ball in this respect. :-/


-/-
Mikey-San

[AKcrab]

It can't be worse than 10.1.5, it just can't. Unbelievable. Maybe it's all the new help they had to add for the new calculator? ;)

[Craig R. Arko]

Anyone care to comment if the developer releases were this bad? Is it just 6c115 that broke, and there's hope for a better Help Viewer in 10.2.1? :rolleyes:

This is the one thing I've found which I'd call a step back so far, although if there are hardware issues, they would count too.

[cybergoober]

Originally posted by Craig R. Arko
Anyone care to comment if the developer releases were this bad? Is it just 6c115 that broke, and there's hope for a better Help Viewer in 10.2.1? :rolleyes:


I didn't have this problem with earlier builds.
I was about to chime in with the same problem. I tried to launch Mac Help this morning and finally gave up and Force-Quit it each time because it was taking so long. As I read this thread I launched Mac Help and it opened nearly instantaneously. Not sure what was going on. Perhaps there was a problem with the online help on Apple's side. Try opening Mac Help again and see if it's any better now. I have now opened it about a half-dozen times and each time it opened immediately.

[taikahn]

im thinking it is possibly the lack of a second or third follow up DNS request on the help applications part... Seems like (when I watch my router lights) that if I get a good quick DNS response (immidiate blinking) it works.... if I get (which I get a lot) a slow DNS response it spins and spins and spins and ....

[cybergoober]

OK. I've heard of a lot of people saying that trashing ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.help.plist and ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.helpviewer.plist resolves the problem for them. Perhaps it is worth a shot.

[Craig R. Arko]

Yes; trashing the prefs seems to speed things up an enormous amount. Let's hope that sticks. :)

[Diji]

So I trashed the 2 pref docs and it has improved, though it improved once before and then returned, but why does it not then rebuild the 2 docs? Ah it does if you change the windows size or location. Though I have not thus far seen it slow down again. Odd but satisfying.

Thanks gang!

[fold]

Sorry to rain on this parade, but deleting the prefs files didn't make a bit of diifference on my Dual G4. Help is still so slow as to be almost useless.

[rusto]

Same here, the app itself launches in two bounces...but why can't it be configured to just load the help file assciated with the app you invoked it from?

[Vanish]

Help Center was all but worthless for me last night, even after trashing the prefs, which is an odd fix for a fresh install on a clean HDD anyway, but I tried it.

This morning, however, it was downright snappy? Watching your Mac's activity will show you that Help Center always checks the net for updates, before displaying it's interface to you.

My best guess? Apple's server are inundated with people trynig to use the Help Center, so the huge delay is caused trying to check for updated files. I did not experience any delay in changing pages, etc. only during the initial launch of the program.

[bluehz]

Sounds like all of this boils down to Help Center accessing remote servers somewhere. Why is this happening? All help files are installed locally. Sure - maybe updates will be issued at times - but DAMN..I can install those manually. I would rather that than this Help Center sluggishness. I have started seeking out the help files themselves and loading them in web browser - this works great ONCE you find the location and THEN find exactly which html is the index file. There seems to be no particular naming conventions. Sheer ease of use is why I would prefer the Help Center facility.

What about blocking or disabling the remote server access?

Also - I have noticed that Help Center "indexes" help files in much the same way that the System does. This could also explain some sluggishness - at least the first time you start it up.

[enola]

Okay, I was curious so I took a look at the network traffic that occurs when Help Viewer is launching. It's going to help2.apple.com and is constantly polling it until I'm figuring it does a timeout and finally loads the file locally.

So I unplugged the ethernet cable to see what would happen. Help Viewer started up just fine. When I plugged the cable back in and I started help up again it was pointing to help1.apple.com and fired up right away. I think maybe it not finding a server caused it to change servers.

So after a few minutes had gone by I tried Help Viewer again and it was in that waiting for timeout state reverting back to help2.apple.com. So thinking I might try and force it to go local or perhaps use help1.apple.com I put in a rule in ipfw to deny tcp traffic to help2. What do you know it seems to have worked! I could see that ipfw matched the rule once and went to the local files. And now it's going to help1.

This was just an experiment. I don't know ipfw that well and I view what I did as purely a temporary work around and an exercise in curiousity. It seems to have worked during my 30 minutes of playing around with it. Here's what I typed into the command line to install the rule. Beware this goes away the next time you reboot. I know there's a way to install a rule permanently but I don't think this merits it.

sudo ipfw add 10000 deny tcp from any to help2.apple.com http

To get rid of it reboot or type:

sudo ipfw delete 10000

[bluehz]

I blocked both servers and it did improve Help Center

sudo ipfw add 10000 deny tcp from any to 17.254.0.207 http
sudo ipfw add 10001 deny tcp from any to 17.254.0.208 http

[rusto]

Yep, after two bounces Help Center ready to use about 15 seconds later for me after doing the block. Good work.

[enola]

Looks like Apple may have fixed the slow Help View startup. It's now going to a new server, helposx.apple.com and is up and running very quickly.

Ignore what I posted above about blocking outbound traffic unless you want don't want Help to check for updated files.

Didn't I say this would be a temporary work around, hehe. ;)

[osxpez]

This thread indicates that, apart from a slowness caused by hard-to-access servers at apple, the help center in Jaguar is actually useful? Well, that's a huge improvement over 10.1. Because even if help center is not as slow as you've described here it's still useless (and way too slow). It's a leftover from a bad help implementation on OS 9. I do hope they've changed the paradigm totally in Jaguar.

[Jacques]

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/1914