Monthly Archives: May 2011

iPad Safari and the annoying refresh issue

Ok, so I’ve had my iPad for almost a year and I cannot say it has always been the case but I recently found Safari was refreshing all the saved / open web pages. If I swapped from a web page to make a note in a blog or similar, then swapping back triggered a new refresh of the original page.

Annoying behaviour and according to various forums that I quickly read this is at your option: a memory issue; a Safari issue; an IOS version issue; a bug that may or may not be fixed.

Fix: Atomic Web Browser aside from the fact that it is a tabbed browser more akin to Chrome and less like the clumsy Safari interface, it appears to not do refreshes.

I want to play with it some more this week but with a free ‘Lite’ trial version and only AU$1.19 for a full version I am guessing that I won’t be looking any further.

MySQL slowing down over time

I’ve got a mySQL server based in a Debian distro with updates etc, in a virtual (vmware) server.

Over time the slow queries log starts to get entries and it seems that the more it gets the slower mySQL is responding to all queries.

Shutdown and restart the server and it’s now 5 days without a single slow query entry. (of course, I could have buggered up the slow query logging, but probably not)

I have started trawling to find a possible solution, the now unmaintained blog Hack mySQL has this reporting process that I might want to come back to.

Yes, I came back to this and you may need to fiddle with the mysqld.sock location but otherwise this script works fine. Also use the prompt for your username and password if it is not root. The script appears to fall over with the following error:
[php]KEY BUFFER
ERROR 1317 (70100) at line 1: Query execution was interrupted
[/php]
but in fact it is just thinking. Wait 5 minutes or so (I didnot time it) and it will complete.

The information about your config and resources may just point you at some setting to improve the performance.

However for me I have not used the tuning script to makes changes as yet.

Earlier in the week I was checking the DNS settings as a result of a thread (that I have lost the link to) which led me to read both the basic notes at MySQL on DNS and this entry at HackMySQL

Now I am not copying the information from those sites verbatim, but suffice to say that your MySQL server and the application server(s) making requests must all see each other correctly by hostname and ip address. If your hosts file (local) or DNS server (local or remote) have incorrect details it may result in regular misdirection of the responses from the database.

In my case I found a small mistake in the hosts file on the mySQL server that was misdirecting responses to the wrong server. i.e the app server was requesting but being found with a different location on reverse lookup. I made that change last weekend and this week we have 0 entries in the slow log and no user issues. (At least none we were told about).

On that basis I think it might be case closed.

So if your MySQL is slowing for no apparent reason check and double-check the name resolution forward and backward.

Syncing iPhone / iPad with 2 computers

I use my own notebook for most of my work but recently took on a new contract role that included a work notebook. As I use my iPad for meeting notes and recently on an interstate trip found that I did not need my notebook until I got home (might be able to travel lighter!)

In any case I need to be able to sync with both notebooks so that I can manage the various documents I generate.

For me I have previously done something similar when moving from an older system to a new system and simply copied the iTunes folder from the My Music directory from the old to the new. This morning I ensured that I had both systems with the current iTunes and then sync’d my iPhone and iPad with my personal notebook. I then copied the iTunes folder to the new work notebook (having renamed the newly created iTunes folder to iTunes.original just in case). Once that was done I plugged in my iPhone to the new notebook. iTunes prompted to transfer Purchased Apps which was ok, and later I agreed to Authorise this computer using my regular account in the iTunes store. Once that was complete, I did the same process with my iPad and it all works. To confirm that I had no issues I then did a repeat sync with my personal notebook which also worked. Sync’ing with two notebooks works.

I also read with interest this entry from Andrew Grant’s ‘Shiny Things’ blog and I will want to investigate this further.