Improve startup time on Linux

Does Obsidian take a really long time to startup for anyone else?

It takes me 7 (seven whole giant) seconds to open an Obsidian window.

I get pummeled with this 7 seconds every time I startup the application, but also when I want to open another vault. Basically anytime I have to open another Obsidian window.

Here’s the laptop I’m using.

  • Dell XPS 13
  • CPU: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core™ i5-1135G7 @ 2.40GHz
  • Memory: 16GiB
  • GPU: TigerLake-LP GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics]
  • OS: Arch Linux 5.18.15-arch1-1
  • DE: Gnome 40 on Wayland

Technically, I’m installing from: AUR (en) - obsidian-appimage but that just downloads the AppImage file. The results are the same if I execute the app image directly.

$ ./obsidian-appimage-0.15.6.AppImage 
2022-08-04 16:43:57 Loading main app package /tmp/.mount_obsidi48E6mo/resources/obsidian.asar
Updates disabled.
[24338:0804/094358.370702:ERROR:sandbox_linux.cc(377)] InitializeSandbox() called with multiple threads in process gpu-process.
[24338:0804/094402.738881:ERROR:gl_surface_presentation_helper.cc(260)] GetVSyncParametersIfAvailable() failed for 1 times!

I have 1 plugin installed:

  • Dataview

I tried disabling it, but the startup time is unaffected.

I have 500 markdown files, totaling about 3MB of text. Also, I have about 200 images.

GPU acceleration is on by default. I tried disabling that, but nothing seems to have changed.

I always remember Obsidian being slow to startup, but I’m finally starting to get really annoyed with it.

2 Likes

There is an option in the community plugins menu called 'Debug startup time'
Is something I saw someone else post regarding slow startup (on windows actually). Maybe that’ll help find out what’s going on

I enabled the “Debug startup time” setting. Here’s what I got.

Total plugin setup: 0ms

That makes sense. I have 1 plugin and I disabled it. The startup time is still 7 seconds.

It seems like the bottleneck is Obsidian itself, not the plugins.

I have noticed the same problem, on Windows this wasn’t an issue on the same machine.

Running Ubuntu, installed Obsidian through Snap.

Start up seems to be shorter when “re-opening” the app.


I don’t recall noticing this back when I was running Manjaro, strange.

aight, so in my case it seems to be related to gpu drivers (AMD in my case, 7 second gap between timestamps), and checking for updates on Github (another 6 seconds).

I simply found these by starting from terminal without adjusting any verbosity.

Both of these delays dissapear on consecutive startups in my case.

I don’t remember how I installed Obsidian on my Ubuntu 22.04 machine but I want to confirm that:

  • I have a long startup time (several seconds, actually enough to find and read this very thread here)
  • restarting and changing vaults is fast and feels much more reasonable though

My machine details:

  • OS: Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600
  • GPU: GeForce GTX 1070
  • GPU driver: nvidia-driver-510
  • RAM: 16GB DDR4 3600 MHz

I have two plugins installed and enabled but this problem also existed before I had them.

Other stuff (games, Chrome, VSCode, Blender, …) runs just fine and starts faster than Obisidan which feels weird.

For me, the obsidian takes several seconds to start. Want to discover what’s going on too.

Opening from the “Open” button on the software installer it shows this error in my open console:

flatpak run md.obsidian.Obsidian /app/bin/obsidian.sh: line 24: 13 Segmentation fault (core dumped) zypak-wrapper /app/obsidian $@

Opening directly from console

$ flatpak run md.obsidian.Obsidian
2022-12-11 19:31:01 Loading main app package /app/resources/obsidian.asar
LaunchProcess: failed to execvp:
xdg-settings
Gtk-Message: 16:31:01.491: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
Gtk-Message: 16:31:01.491: Failed to load module "pk-gtk-module"
Gtk-Message: 16:31:01.491: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
Gtk-Message: 16:31:01.491: Failed to load module "pk-gtk-module"
[13:1211/163101.501912:ERROR:bus.cc(397)] Failed to connect to the bus: Failed to connect to socket /run/dbus/system_bus_socket: No such file or directory
[13:1211/163101.501943:ERROR:bus.cc(397)] Failed to connect to the bus: Failed to connect to socket /run/dbus/system_bus_socket: No such file or directory
2022-12-11 19:31:01 Checking for update using Github
libva error: vaGetDriverNameByIndex() failed with unknown libva error, driver_name = (null)
[57:1211/163101.551758:ERROR:sandbox_linux.cc(377)] InitializeSandbox() called with multiple threads in process gpu-process.
[57:1211/163101.557672:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.557849:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.557972:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.558107:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.558254:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.558322:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.558396:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.558506:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.558616:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.558712:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.558867:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.558976:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.559071:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.559194:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.559261:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.559325:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.559387:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.559452:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.559520:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.559580:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.559643:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.559716:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.559778:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.559838:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.559910:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.559978:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.560043:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.560111:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.560179:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.560240:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.560303:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.560364:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.560436:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.560501:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.560569:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.560627:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.560688:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.560749:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.560811:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[57:1211/163101.560872:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
2022-12-11 19:31:01 Success.
2022-12-11 19:31:01 Latest version is 1.0.3
2022-12-11 19:31:01 App is up to date.
[13:1211/163131.569958:ERROR:gpu_process_host.cc(975)] GPU process exited unexpectedly: exit_code=512
libva error: vaGetDriverNameByIndex() failed with unknown libva error, driver_name = (null)
[112:1211/163131.614877:ERROR:sandbox_linux.cc(377)] InitializeSandbox() called with multiple threads in process gpu-process.
[112:1211/163131.619169:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[112:1211/163131.619291:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)
[112:1211/163131.619385:ERROR:gbm_wrapper.cc(275)] Failed to export buffer to dma_buf: No such file or directory (2)

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