How to Fix Slow Start of Midnight Commander (MC) on Linux?

MC (Midnight Commander) is one of the most commonly used console file managers for Linux. One of the disadvantages that most administrators encounter is that mc sometimes takes a very long time to start up.

After connecting to the host via SSH and running the mc command, you have to wait 1-3 minutes for it to start. This problem is most often related to DNS settings.

Solution 0: check that DNS servers are configured in the network interface settings and that these servers are available.

There are other ways to fix the mc slow startup problem:

Solution 1:

Add your server name and IP to the /etc/hosts file. You can use the following command:

sudo echo "127.0.0.2 $(hostname).domain $(hostname)" >> /etc/hosts

Solution 2:

You can disable using name resolution when connecting via SSH. To do this, add the parameter to the sshd configuration file /etc/sshsshd_config:

UseDNS no

Restart sshd:

systemctl restart sshd || systemctl restart ssh

Solution 3:

Try to disable built-in mc shell support:

alias mc="mc --nosubshell"

After that, mc should open instantly.