Why can't I connect to bitcoind on localhost?
My "Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     T6600  @ 2.20GHz" laptop just took 80 seconds to create 1000 new addresses, so I'm surprised you're seeing over 2 hours for 10 times that.

One thing I noticed is that the address creation is noticeable faster now than I remember it - so perhaps upgrading to a recent version of the client will speed things up for you.

Run "tail -f ~/.bitcoin/debug.log" to see a log of which key number it's currently creating.

Either way, the start up should only be noticeably slower the first time, when the pool is initially created.

Edit: (in response to miernik's comment)

The debug.log output will end with lines like the following while it's populating the keypool:

keypool added key 41, size=41
keypool added key 42, size=42
keypool added key 43, size=43
keypool added key 44, size=44
keypool added key 45, size=45
keypool added key 46, size=46
keypool added key 47, size=47
keypool added key 48, size=48
keypool added key 49, size=49
keypool added key 50, size=50


The stuff you're seeing is what happens while bitcoin is running normally.  It's receiving and responding to messages on the P2P network.  I don't know what to suggest as to why it isn't accepting RPC connections.  Could it be a firewall issue, or some other configuration problem unrelated to the keypool argument?