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Time Outs With Safari
#28118 02/09/14 02:57 AM
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Using Safari (7.0.1) ) with Mavericks (10.9.1) on a 2010 iMac.

Go to my investment broker website. Log in. Shift around for a minute or so and then sometimes get a time out. Other times not. With Firefox or Google Chrome, never a time out.

No time outs with Safari on my bank website or other sites.

Wrote the broker website. It recommended the usual things -- reset Safari. and delete the broker website cookies. Did no good. The broker website reported no known problems there with Safari.

I think this all started with my downloading the 10.9.1 version of Mavericks. But not sure of that.

Running from my external drive Disk Utility Repair Disk or Disk Warrior -- on my iMac's HD -- does nothing helpful.

Can always use Firefox. Prefer Safari,

Any solutions from similar past experiences -- or just things to try?


Last edited by cyn; 02/09/14 09:58 PM. Reason: Topic moved from "Mac OS X Applications" to the "Networking" forum.
Re: Time Outs With Safari
RHV #28119 02/09/14 07:05 AM
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The recent "all-purpose culprit" as respects Safari issues has been extensions, although your issue's being intermittent suggests otherwise.

It's an easy enough try, though, to open Safari's pref pane, turn all your extensions off in one shot with the switch, and see what happens.

Good luck.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Time Outs With Safari
artie505 #28122 02/09/14 01:54 PM
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Thanks. I had no extensions running in Safari.

Re: Time Outs With Safari
RHV #28126 02/09/14 06:52 PM
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Safari has always been more scrupulous about honoring various security features/standards in HTML and/or Javascript than other browsers so the difference in Safari and Firefox or Chrome would not be surprising. The fact Safari is not having the problem on other financial web sites would seem to indicate the issue resides in the particular web site. If one had the inclination, some hours spent in close scrutiny of the code from that site might reveal what is triggering the timeout. Personally I would look first at the Javascript used.

If you can find a link to contact the site webmaster you might inform them of the issue. It is highly likely they do not know it exists. Sadly it may be equally likely they do not care and work under the assumption that everyone uses Internet Explorer. (Here it is Sunday, the first day of the week and I have already gotten my weekly Microsoft Internet Exploder grumble off my chest. — What am I to do for the rest of the week? tongue )


If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?

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Re: Time Outs With Safari
joemikeb #28132 02/10/14 04:03 AM
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Thanks. I emailed the broker website, as I reported here. Don't know if the webmaster replied or just somebody else set up to handle complaints.

If the problem were Safari's scrupulousness, why can I go for several days with no time outs and then be hit for several days with many time outs. Or is Safari's scrupulousness hit and miss?

What about some other possible remedies? Reinstalling 10.9 and then 10.9.1. Or installing an older version of Safari in 10.9.1. Is the latter possible?


Re: Time Outs With Safari
RHV #28139 02/11/14 10:33 PM
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Safari 7.0.1 is part of the OS X 10.9.1 update, so I doubt you can replace it with an earlier version. If you use Time Machine, I suppose you might try spinning the clock back to 10.9, which would revert your Safari back to 7.0. This would allow you to see if Safari 7.0.1 is indeed the problem.



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Re: Time Outs With Safari
dkmarsh #28145 02/12/14 06:46 PM
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Thanks. Don't use TM. I've got a bootable clone of my 10.9.1 HD via Carbon Copy Cloner on my external drive. Did the clone, I think, before the time outs problem with Safari manifested itself. Will boot the clone to see if Safari there is problematic or not.

Re: Time Outs With Safari
RHV #28191 02/19/14 02:54 AM
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I "think" I've solved it: 51/49 personal probability.

On another forum, I was told to empty Safari Cache in my User Library. One can't do that by merely resetting Safari -- emptying the cache is not (so far as I can see) included under that resetting.

I'm with 10.9.1. Safari in my user Library has no cache file in it!!! Yes .. there is a cache file in my User Library, but it's not restricted to Safari.

Some Googling got me this: Go to Safari prefs. Go to Advanced and click on "Show Develop on the Safari menu bar". Did that. Develop on the Safari menus bar holds lots of goodies (hitherto unknown to me) -- one of which is: Empty the cache. Did that.

So far no time-outs. But good short term results are not worth much.

Do you guys here know about the Develop menu for Safari? Probably you do.

If one has troubles, one good thing about them is that is one learns something new (and hopefully useful).

Likely I could empty the Safari cache in 10.9.1 by using some freebie apps that I never pay attention to. But it's nice to know that you can do it with just good old Apple. My first Mac was bought in early 1984 -- with all the guys signatures on the inside of the back panel. Got rid of it six years later (alas) without contemplating its $$$ value as a rather famous antique.

Re: Time Outs With Safari
RHV #28192 02/19/14 03:14 AM
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I hope your fix works.

I've always used command-option-E to empty Safari's cache (Safari 5.1.10 > Develop offers "Disable Cache", but not "Empty Cache".)

On the other hand, though, since Safari 5.0, my emptying cache via c-o-E has invariably resulted in Safari Web Content/WebProcess's crashing after a few emptyings.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Time Outs With Safari
artie505 #28193 02/19/14 04:38 AM
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Develop with Safari 7.0.1 (from 10.9.1) offers both empty caches and disable caches.

Re: Time Outs With Safari
RHV #28194 02/19/14 09:21 AM
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I'm not sure why "Disable" is still included; I may be misunderstanding its functionality, but it doesn't seem do anything.

I'll be interested to see if your cache emptying results in Safari's crashing.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Time Outs With Safari
artie505 #28195 02/20/14 12:16 AM
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No crashing so far. And no time outs either. But on both I'll have to wait and see.

I used Develop in the Safari menu bar to Empty Caches (surely Safari's), not remembering another route. But there is another route that somebody pointed out to me -- and that I should have remembered. Go to my user Library, Caches, and delete com.apple.Safari. Which I did.

But is it right to assume that Develop's "Empty Caches" does the same job that the deletion of the file named "com.apple.Safari" does. I assume so. But when different but similar words are used, one has to wonder whether that verbal difference means a substantive difference.

Re: Time Outs With Safari
RHV #28196 02/20/14 01:19 AM
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Originally Posted By: RHV
No crashing so far. And no time outs either. But on both I'll have to wait and see.

I used Develop in the Safari menu bar to Empty Caches (surely Safari's), not remembering another route. But there is another route that somebody pointed out to me -- and that I should have remembered. Go to my user Library, Caches, and delete com.apple.Safari. Which I did.

But is it right to assume that Develop's "Empty Caches" does the same job that the deletion of the file named "com.apple.Safari" does. I assume so. But when different but similar words are used, one has to wonder whether that verbal difference means a substantive difference.

I only experience the crashing when I empty Safari's cache multiple times between quitting it, so you may not be at risk.

Substantive difference assuming that this Snowy info holds true for Mavericks (and I suspect that it does): Since the introduction of Safari 5.0 there is no cache file in ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari, its location having changed to /private/var/folders/TE/TEdLZdGD2Rmh0U+F72QxX++++TI/-Caches-/com.apple.Safari. (1. The long string may be different on your Mac. 2. That location is also home to Safari's SafeBrowsing cache, which should not be deleted.)

Have you tried command-option-E (as I mentioned earlier)...the traditional way to empty Safari's cache?

Edit: A word of caution... Never delete folders without looking to see what's inside them first. (Extensions live, at least in part, in the folder you deleted.)

Last edited by artie505; 02/20/14 03:23 PM. Reason: Better wording & Edit

The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Time Outs With Safari
RHV #28199 02/20/14 08:17 PM
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Deleting the folder com.apple.safari from your Caches directory does a little bit more than just deleting the Safari cache. It also deletes the caches your Safari extensions might use (if you have any extensions and if they use any cached information), and it deletes the previews used for example when you show the Safari Topsites.


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Re: Time Outs With Safari
tacit #28200 02/20/14 08:50 PM
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1. Safari's cache has moved back to ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari in Mavericks and is no longer located in /private/var/folders/TE/TEdLZdGD2Rmh0U+F72QxX++++TI/-Caches-/com.apple.Safari as it is in Snowy?

2. I've got a folder for every one of my (Snowy) extensions in ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari, and their contents look more like ".../Extension/Contents" than caches; is caches all they actually are?

Thanks.

Last edited by artie505; 02/20/14 08:51 PM.

The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Time Outs With Safari
tacit #28201 02/20/14 09:00 PM
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"Have you tried command-option-E (as I mentioned earlier)...the traditional way to empty Safari's cache?"

Yes. When one puts Develop into the Safari menu bar in 10.9, Develop's "Empty Caches" is given as option-command-E.

I used "Empty Caches", quit Safari, and then winged it by deleting com.apple.Safari from Caches in my user Library. I "seem" to have eliminated my time-outs with Safari. I've been in and out of my broker website (that prompted all my time-outs) a lot during the past 12 hours, getting info for doing my income taxes. No time-outs.

I don't know which of the two apparently did the job.

Re: Time Outs With Safari
artie505 #28202 02/21/14 01:39 AM
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In OS X 10.8.4, Safari 6.1, there is no Cache.db in /private/var/folders/pn/long_alphanumeric_string/C/com.apple.Safari/ [note that the path structure is a bit different as well]; the folder's only content is SafeBrowsing.db. I can't tell you if this changed in Lion, since I skipped from Leopard to Mountain Lion. The contents of ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/ in 10.8 are the same as in 10.5—Cache.db, Extensions/, and Webpage Previews/—but with two additional databases: Cache.db-shm and Cache.db-wal. I've been unable to unravel their functions.

The results of running ls -lSF ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/:

Code:
total 25840
-rw-r--r--@ 1 dkmarsh  staff  12435456 Feb 20 19:55 Cache.db
-rw-r--r--@ 1 dkmarsh  staff    758112 Feb 20 20:01 Cache.db-wal
-rw-r--r--@ 1 dkmarsh  staff     32768 Feb 20 14:23 Cache.db-shm
drwxr-xr-x  6 dkmarsh  staff       204 Feb 20 14:24 Extensions/
drwxr-xr-x  2 dkmarsh  staff        68 Feb 20 14:28 Webpage Previews/

After ⌥⌘E:

Code:
-rw-r--r--@ 1 dkmarsh  staff  12435456 Feb 20 19:55 Cache.db
-rw-r--r--@ 1 dkmarsh  staff    955872 Feb 20 20:02 Cache.db-wal
-rw-r--r--@ 1 dkmarsh  staff     32768 Feb 20 14:23 Cache.db-shm
drwxr-xr-x  6 dkmarsh  staff       204 Feb 20 14:24 Extensions/
drwxr-xr-x  2 dkmarsh  staff        68 Feb 20 14:28 Webpage Previews/
frittata:~ dkmarsh$ ls -lSF ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/

After quitting and relaunching Safari:

Code:
total 29296
-rw-r--r--@ 1 dkmarsh  staff  12435456 Feb 20 20:04 Cache.db
-rw-r--r--@ 1 dkmarsh  staff   2529712 Feb 20 20:04 Cache.db-wal
-rw-r--r--@ 1 dkmarsh  staff     32768 Feb 20 20:04 Cache.db-shm
drwxr-xr-x  6 dkmarsh  staff       204 Feb 20 20:04 Extensions/
drwxr-xr-x  2 dkmarsh  staff        68 Feb 20 14:28 Webpage Previews/

The only thing changing is Cache.db-wal…and it's growing.

Next, after moving ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/ to the Desktop, then quitting and relaunching Safari:

Code:
total 14752
-rw-r--r--@ 1 dkmarsh  staff  5070848 Feb 20 20:12 Cache.db
-rw-r--r--@ 1 dkmarsh  staff  2447312 Feb 20 20:13 Cache.db-wal
-rw-r--r--@ 1 dkmarsh  staff    32768 Feb 20 20:12 Cache.db-shm
drwxr-xr-x  5 dkmarsh  staff      170 Feb 20 20:12 Extensions/

Cache.db-wal is still more or less at its expanded size, but Cache.db has been cut by about 60%. (The Webpage Previews folder does eventually regenerate, under what circumstances I'm not sure. It's related to Top Sites, but only tangentially, since I never use that feature.)

Even a modest amount of googling reveals that the apparent dysfunctionality of Empty Caches/⌥⌘E in Mavericks has caused much gnashing of teeth. I can't recommend trashing ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/, but that's certainly what I would do, were I suspecting I had a cache-related issue. As for the Extensions folder, that appears to regenerate with no ill effects. There are slight changes in numbers of items within some individual Extensions' folders—perhaps the result of updated definitions or the like?—but my AdBlock customizations, for example, are still intact.



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Re: Time Outs With Safari
dkmarsh #28203 02/21/14 06:22 AM
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"Even a modest amount of googling reveals that the apparent dysfunctionality of Empty Caches/⌥⌘E in Mavericks has caused much gnashing of teeth. I can't recommend trashing ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.Safari/, but that's certainly what I would do, were I suspecting I had a cache-related issue."

DK --very helpful (as usual). Research takes time. And then there is the need for good judgment, such as yours.

I did not know about the apparent dysfunctionality of command ⌥⌘E in Mavs. So I used it first via the Develop menu in Safari 7.0.1. But I got time-outs afterwards.

But I blamed myself for that -- perhaps I did not use the command correctly (never used it before) or failed to shut down Safari afterwards before testing (I can't remember). So I did not mention the continued time outs. I should have.

And then, a longtime and quite reliable user on the OS X Forums recommended that I go to my User Library, Caches, and delete com. apple.Safari. I did that.

So far no time-outs -- and a lot of recent use of my broker investment account (that solely caused my time out problems) -- to get info for doing my 2013 income taxes. Four hours today. No problems or delays so afar. But i never want to judge success by the short term.

So, in retrospect, and after you, DK, have commented on the apparent dysfunctionality of Emptying Caches ⌥⌘E in Mavs (and my experience as above), I'll guess that by going to my User Library and doing the deletion there produced the "apparent" cure for my time out problems.

But I am a modest doubter of most things. Reported short term success often means little. Even carefully done tests in the natural and social sciences mean little unless they can be replicated independently by many others (who cancel often uncontrollable human biases and misunderstandings) and over a decently long length of time (to rule out random/accidental variations in results). Sorry for a mini lecture. But I was long ago a University prof lecturing on such subject matters.

Thanks DK

Re: Time Outs With Safari
dkmarsh #28204 02/22/14 09:07 AM
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Nice post; thanks for clearing that up.

That Cache.db-wal is, indeed, an elusive and mysterious little critter that I'd be deleting constantly if it were on my deuced Mac(hina).

I took a quick look for it (not Cache.db-shm, though) - knowing full well that I wasn't very likely to find very much if you couldn't - and found out little more than that it apparently first appeared in OS X 10.8.3, that it is apparently an iOS item, and that it seems to have something to do with an SQL database.

The complete absence of details about its contents, though, is pretty disconcerting.


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
Re: Time Outs With Safari
artie505 #28205 02/22/14 12:19 PM
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It turns out that .db-wal (Write-Ahead Logging) and .db-shm (Shared-Memory) files are associated with sqlite databases generally, not with cache files in particular. More specifically, they are parts of a mechanism by which changes to a database are recorded separately from the original as security against corruption due to a crash in the middle of a transaction (not unlike filesystem journaling in OS X—in fact, the traditional way of doing this in sqlite is via a rollback journal).

On the first page linked to above, mentioned as among the disadvantages of WAL mode are "an additional quasi-persistent "-wal" file and "-shm" shared memory file associated with each database."



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Re: Time Outs With Safari
dkmarsh #28209 02/24/14 02:52 AM
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Great that you and Artie having an interchange.

As for me, none of what I have done has helped to eliminate my time outs on Safari as regards a particle website. I had a short term success only.

However, somebody on another website mentioned that doing a refresh after a Safari time out got him back to where he wanted to be. And, for me, it works most times -- not always.

Even when it works, it indicates a deficiency somewhere. Why would refreshing work -- even some of the time?


Re: Time Outs With Safari
RHV #28218 02/25/14 10:22 AM
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Not sure what you mean by "refresh." Are you referring to reloading the web page?



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Re: Time Outs With Safari
dkmarsh #28237 02/26/14 04:05 PM
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Yes -- reloading the page.

The Request Timeout error is explained here:

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/findbyerrormessage/a/408error.htm

I've just downloaded the recent update for Mavs (9.0.2) which updates Safari to 7.0.2. I'll see if Safari 7.0.2 gives me Request Timeouts.

Re: Time Outs With Safari
RHV #28268 03/02/14 04:45 AM
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DK:

You NEED to fix up your FTM forums.

I started a post on my Safari TimeOut problem. Check to see the thread-- that you have posted to. Most of the posts do not relate to my problem. Most should have been sent to another topic heading.

When I came back to my topic at FTM, why did I have to see a bunch talking on other matters, no doubt possibly important matters that are congenial to them, but not addressed to my problem?

FTM seems to be, more and more, a bunch of insiders talking to themselves -- for lack of clients. And the insiders are not that with it on certain topics because, possibly, of the lack of demanding enquiries from clients.

Your guys/gals did not seem to know that my problem is fairly widespread -- no reference at all to my problem from other sites. Amazing -- as if my problem was a first for them!! Are your guys and gals a bit out to lunch?

Sorry to sound cranky. But I've pretty much given up on FTM from this recent experience. You MUST follow up on posted problems and not laden the follow ups with irrelevant insider and other talk. Dumb that FTM did not already know and cure that!! Your forums are NOT an alley for your insiders to learn and clog up responses to clients. The insiders must learn themselves from the outside and then help the clients from inside. The Apple and OS X forums are a good example of THAT WAY to meet what most users expect from forums.

Last edited by RHV; 03/02/14 04:48 AM.
Re: Time Outs With Safari
RHV #28269 03/02/14 10:23 AM
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I went out and walked a coupl'a miles in the vain hope that cyn, preferably, or one of the Mods would beat me to this, but, no such luck.

Your post made me laugh, albeit sadly.

Do you realize that you hijacked your own thread...spun it off in a totally unrelated direction to complain about others having veered off tangentially?

Your complaint would have been more appropriately posted in the FineTunedMac Feedback Forum.

Welcome to the club. wink


The new Great Equalizer is the SEND button.

In Memory of Harv: Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. ~Voltaire
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