This was fine in 21.5.18, where timeout was 0.1 seconds, but has reverted to 1.0 seconds in 21.5.20 (or maybe in .19 which I never tried). Result is M-x manual-entry once again takes almost 60 seconds to "clean" the bash man page. With change below, it only takes 3 seconds. Fixed by: *** process-unix.c 2005/05/05 17:18:30 1.1 --- process-unix.c 2005/05/05 17:18:38 *************** *** 1548,1554 **** /* Buffer is full. Wait, accepting input; that may allow the program to finish doing output and read more. */ ! Faccept_process_output (Qnil, make_int (1), Qnil); /* It could have *really* finished, deleting the process */ if (NILP(p->pipe_outstream)) return; --- 1548,1555 ---- /* Buffer is full. Wait, accepting input; that may allow the program to finish doing output and read more. */ ! // Faccept_process_output (Qnil, make_int (1), Qnil); ! Faccept_process_output (Qnil, Qnil, make_int (10)); /* It could have *really* finished, deleting the process */ if (NILP(p->pipe_outstream)) return;