Dan Ritter wrote: > Go to /etc/nsswitch.conf > > If these lines look like this > > passwd: compat systemd > group: compat systemd > shadow: compat systemd > > remove the systemd references. > > If performance improves immensely immediately after the edit, > that was the problem.
On re-reading the original complaint, I am nearly convinced that this is the problem. A ridiculously decelerated gzip is evidence of one of the following: - CPU throttling - disk errors - something interfering with the disk reading or writing The failure mode for systemd providing nsswitch services is a huge delay of lookup times for every passwd or group entry which affects every file open. gzip opens a lot of files. I saw this precise behavior on a couple of upgraded Debian boxes. -dsr-