There seems to be a problem in Magento's reading of the var/cache directory. I've disabled Full Page Caching for testing.

When I execute the bash command chmod -R 777var/cache/` before loading the page, it loads ~3 seconds quicker (the time it takes before 'mage::dispatch::routers_match' is reached in the Profiler is reduced from ~4 seconds to ~1 second).

This speed-up remains a while but then is lost until the chmod is called again.

I'm guessing this has to do with writing permissions somehow? The odd thing is, the cache contents are afaik owned by the process that is executing magento (the web user).

Does anyone have any clues what could be the problem or what could be changed to prevent this?