Emacs responds slow: how to profile?

Question

I'm sometimes experiencing some Emacs. Sometimes emacs spends an awful lot of time in saving a file. I haven't quite figured out why and when it happens. It seems to occur when using IPython and ropemacs.

Is there a way to find out one what emacs spends its time? Note that emacs does not respond during "saving" the file.

Another thread on profiling emacs did not provide a clear solution.

Can anybody recommend me what steps to undertake to find out what is keeping emacs busy. As said, it occurs when running the ipython shell and when I'm working with ropemacs to link myself a way through a lot of code. Or, does anybody know of issues with these packages? Or, Is is an operating system issue? (I have ubuntu 11.10, emacs 23.3.1, ipython 0.11)

Answer 1

For an overview of your profiling options, see this related question; you can use the tips in my answer there to profile specific packages that you suspect of causing the slow-downs.