pushfix's blog

I'm happy to announce that a free push test utility will be coming soon, bundled with every Pushfix 2.0 package. Current Pushfix 2.0 users will also be able to update to get the push test utility (free). This utility will aid me in diagnosing your problem much faster, should you experience one.

Original manual users will soon be able to migrate to Pushfix 2.0. It is currently in testing.

I will update this blog post with more news soon!

By the time I got this posted after stopping purchases and finding the cause, it was already resolved. A built-in source in Cydia (ZodTTD) caused a package file to download that had an errant character in it. When Cydia hit this character it would crash. Not only that, it would also crash on startup after that. There was around two hours where if you ran Cydia it is now damaged until you fix it via OpenSSH. If you don't have OpenSSH installed you may have to restore. Send all your "thanks" to Saurik. He needs to build a recovery mode in Cydia ASAP.

Fix : ssh into your phone and type the following (read for more)

Update 12/27 The push service was back to normal a few hours after I posted this.

The push notification service is normally extremely reliable, but I thought I would post a note today because it does appear to be slow right now. I am not missing pushes, but the occasional timed test in iPush Test comes back in 45-90 seconds which is very rare. I actually have not seen it this slow in my 3 months of using push notifications. Normal push response time is less than 2 seconds.

Please remember that I have no control over this. If you are getting notifications, my package did it's job. I will keep users updated because at this time, there is no push notification service status page. Maybe they are doing some maintenance and some of the server farm is down.

December 12, 2009 update : Ping is back up again, see Ping Facebook page here and click Just fans.

UPDATE: Ping did have maintenance, so there was an "outage". I cannot prove it was Ping, so I will let Gary off the hook. You should also check out WhatsApp messenger here : www.whatsapp.com or Yak (see app store)

The next time push stops working, do nothing and wait up to 24 hours. 99% of the time your push will come back because it is either a problem with developer, your cell or internet provider, or Apple. I will do a blog post if there is an outage of Apple's push servers (very rare) or anything else major happens.

Previous update: Hmm, Ping doesn't work for me but Ping! Lite does? (This was evidently because Gary was updating the Ping server only to support future enhancements) iPush Test works on both phones which still points to an app problem.

Now that I am launching the Cydia package, I will finally be able to write more help threads in the forums and develop more fixes. I may be able to improve the EDGE Disabler and my heartbeat interval fixer is working good in testing, although it will cause more data usage. Nothing extreme, but normal push is 30-50 KB a day and the heartbeat fix may push it to 100-200KB a day. Even if you don't pay for data, that will cost a little more in battery life. Currently, that is my only path towards 100% push delivery on all cell carriers. If you are happy with your current push notifications, you probably aren't affected by the heartbeat interval bug. You can read about the bug here : http://pushfix.info/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=35

By the way, I read a post by a user of the iphoneil.net pushfix and he said his phone was using 20 megabytes of data a day with it and his battery was dying very fast (I wonder why). That's what you get with shared certs.
-pushfix

So apparently a forum I visit says it is very suspicious that I have a 100% success rate. First they complain because push doesn't work and now they complain because I get everyone working. I tell people that is why I charge here, because I spend the effort to get everyone working. Yes, I could do a donation model, but I've done that before and been robbed of my effort. A fair product or service for a fair price is what I say. The donation model would only get me people who give up before they get their push working and then complain about it. If you paid $6, you are willing to work with me through steps that may be necessary to get it working - if it doesn't work immediately.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. What's your opinion?

Ping! has been down for some time and PushGmail (same developer) is not working for me either. Please watch Ping!'s Facebook page and twitter for more details : http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ping/179824541264

I hope everything is ok over there. It's probably just growing pains with so many users.

Update: They are back online.