Have you some times noticed the lag before stsadm actually starts executing (lets say a simple "-o activatefeature") ?
After many googling attempts I finally found this guy's page.
Made short: Insert this line in your host file.
127.0.0.1 crl.microsoft.com
Basically this will bypass the online signature check of any Microsoft .NET assembly (and probably more). If your computer has no internet access this check will wait until the timeout.
Each time you execute stsadm it will load all assemblies "again!". This trick can considerably speedup an install script with many calls to stsadm.
According to a MS guy I work with, this is ok to use on a dev environment but is a security issue for production environment (though in my opinion as the servers are already in a DMZ... (...) ...whatever).
I invite you to test "stsadm -help" 5 times in a row as fast as you can, with and with out the host file modification. Enjoy :)
Edit: Noticed side effect it also slightly speeds up rebuild after iisreset/pool recycle, debugging attach process, visual studio startup, etc...
Comments
If your server cannot connect to the internet (not uncommon) to validate a signature then disabling signature validation will have no negative security impact.
Signed: The Other Guy (Muhimbi)