I have a CentOS 5.4 64bit system. When I try to start an xterm through the desktop or command line, it takes over 10 seconds to start.
But if I try to start xlogo, or even gimp, it's fast.

However, I found if I launch xterm as follows:

xterm +u8

It starts fast. I was reading something about delays due to locale, but couldn't make sense of it. But after trying several things from the xterm manpage, I stumbled upon the "+u8" trick.

Can anyone explain the above behavior, and how to fix the environment such that xterms will launch at normal speed without the "+u8" ? I've read it might be due to dns or name resolution, but I've verified /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/nsswitch.conf aren't referencing DNS.

Thanks!

Well, a simple way to do so is to add
to your .bashrc, but that doesn't fix the root cause of the problem...

This seems to have a slighly better solution... You will have to work out which encoding you are using (try running 'strace xterm' like [s]he did), and disable the offensive portion of that