As a company we have a policy that all project work has to be held on a fast, redundant server to ensure that it is secure and backed up on a regular basis.
Kicad 9.0.5 is installed on my win10 desktop system and the project is on the server, and currently I am the only user on the server)
From time to time Kicad stops responding for ~20 seconds and it seems to be related to saving the project (manual or automatic).
However, if move the project onto my local disk it doesn’t seem to do it. I know to expect it a bit slower via the network but this seems a bit exessive.
Any suggestions ?? (working on my local machine is not really an option - I’ve already had my wrist slapped for doing it
I have never worked with an external drive (NAS, cloud, etc) in KiCad myself, but I’ve read a whole bunch of posts about problems with such a setup, so this does not really surprise me.
On my own system (quite small projects, saved to an local SSD) the auto-save is noticeable sometimes. I don’t know how much influence network speed has, and how much is computer hardware related. Zipping up a backup does need a bit of cpu time. In theory, part of this could be delegated to a separate thread, but I do not know whether KiCad does this.
One easy way to verify is to check the file date/time on the files on the NAS after such an event. You can change the interval or even disable auto-save completely in the preferences.
I work in much the same way i.e project files all stored on a central server in the building and custom libraries stored on Google drive.
When the auto save kicks in I notice a short period of non-responsiveness (about 2-3secs) occasionally. I just put this down to our network not being the fastest or best setup.
I’ve not experienced it being as long as you are seeing though.
I have the same issue when working from home with a KiCad project open over a VPN, generally nothing is as fast as your local hard drive. You are still being paid while you wait for the occasional 20 second delay
What OS is the file server? Could be it the antivirus running on the server keeping the files open while they are being saved. What are the specs on the server?
If you copy files to/from the server is there any latency?
Not really comparing apples with apples but I run linux desktop and have a linux file server with nfs shares and have never noticed any slowdown when saving files. It’s as fast as being local.
I would be be more concerned with the company policy around running EOL Win 10 devices.
is it possible to specify where the autosave files are being stored? Maybe having the autosave local and the files in the remote server is a good option.
I have this same issue, I use KiCAD 2-3 times a week, and have done for years over a similar setup. Win10 devices (still in support through extended support programme), Gigibit Ethernet LAN to data stored on a Synology NAS with HDDs not SSDs, but have never had a problem.
Since the update to KiCAD 8, we regularly see 30 second or more freezes, even when performing non-save operations.
I encountered this problem for the first time yesterday – a complete lockup for more than 10 seconds for no apparent reason. After finding this discussion thread I realized that this was the first time I’d used KiCad 9 at a location where it couldn’t see my Git server. Unticking the “Enable Git tracking” preference appears to have resolved the problem.
Git is designed to be usable without connectivity to servers, and the local copy may have links to several different remotes. Expecting access to one (or several) remotes is broken.
Whatever KiCad is doing with Git needs to be fixed. Is there an open issue to track this bug?
