Hi David,
This is new, after the latest pacman update along with 4.6.13, when running $ pacman -Qi somepackage for the first time it takes 15 seconds for any response.
I've always found it sluggish if its data isn't cached in RAM. `vmstat 1' shows one core is pegged out waiting for I/O; the `wa' column. The I/O is the reading of 814 /var/lib/pacman/local/*/desc. $ LC_ALL=C strace -c pacman -Qi ed % time seconds usecs/call calls errors syscall ------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ---------------- 50.40 0.157668 185 853 openat 35.51 0.111096 67 1670 read 6.27 0.019606 23 853 close 5.48 0.017140 20 856 fstat 0.76 0.002383 34 70 mmap First run of `\time -v pacman -Qi ed' v. second, boring lines deleted. Command being timed "pacman -Qi ed" "pacman -Qi ed" User time (seconds) 0.10 0.06 System time (seconds) 0.29 0.02 Percent of CPU this job got 2% 96% Elapsed (wall clock) time 0:14.70 0:00.08 Voluntary context switches 1786 0 Involuntary context switches 26 16 File system inputs 34768 0 File system outputs 0 0 -- Cheers, Ralph. https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy