"dodji Seketeli" <dodji@seketeli.org> writes:
>> If you set the environment variable LD_BIND_NOW to a non-empty value
>> before running your program (use GDB's 'set env' command), does that
>> eliminate the slow steps?
>
> Wow, yes. It does eliminate the problem. Thank you !.

I'm glad that helped!  But setting LD_BIND_NOW is just a workaround;
GDB ought to work properly without that.  Could you apply the
following patch to GDB and see if it makes the problem go away, even
with LD_BIND_NOW left unset?

(Tested without regressions on Fedora Core 6 IA-32.  I haven't been
able to reproduce the problem myself, so I'm just guessing that this
is the patch.)