strace of python shows nonsense

[Joep van Delft]

Hi there, 


I am puzzled at how I borked my installation. Python loads slow on my
machine, and I decided to use strace and /usr/bin/time to see what is
actually happening. 

# sync && echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
$ /usr/bin/time python2 -c ""
0.19user 0.04system 0:01.22elapsed 19%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata
4200maxresident)k
7312inputs+0outputs (4major+1145minor)pagefaults 0swaps

And when all is in memory: 
$ /usr/bin/time python2 -c ""
0.19user 0.01system 0:00.21elapsed 98%CPU
 (0avgtext+0avgdata 4216maxresident)k 0inputs+0outputs
 (0major+1153minor)pagefaults 0swaps

$ /usr/bin/time python2 -c "import argparse"
0.36user 0.02system 0:00.39elapsed 98%CPU
 (0avgtext+0avgdata 5752maxresident)k 0inputs+0outputs
 (0major+1699minor)pagefaults 0swaps

.2 and .4 seconds to not even get started when all disk I/O is
cached. So what is happening here? 

$ strace -c python2 -c ""
% time     seconds  usecs/call     calls    errors syscall
------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ----------------
 93.26    0.001910           8       230       168 open
  3.66    0.000075           9         8           mprotect
  3.08    0.000063           1        97           fstat64
  0.00    0.000000           0       172           read
  0.00    0.000000           0        63           close
<...>

$ strace -c python2 -c "import argparse"
% time     seconds  usecs/call     calls    errors syscall
------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ----------------
 51.89    0.003732          13       290           read
 47.29    0.003401          18       192       155 stat64
  0.82    0.000059           0       129           mmap2
  0.00    0.000000           0       549       443 open
  0.00    0.000000           0       107           close
<...>

What puzzles me, is the amount of errors for open and stat64. There
are references to stuff I don't know (~/GNUStep directory? Stuff
under site-packages that does not exist? Subdirs of site-packages
that are not included in sys.path?) What is python doing there, and
why? And, more importantly, how can this be corrected? 

Probably irrelevant, but Python2 version 2.7.3, Archlinux (current as
of previous weekend). 


Thanks, 

Joep