How to gain performance through MySQL

[Rich]

Andreas Baier wrote:
> Hello,
> 
>> what is the exact mysql version ? have you changed that lately ?
>> can you upgrade to the latest mysql ?
> Unfortunately I'm not at home today, but as far as I know, it has to be the 
> latest release in portage: mysql-5.0.32.

in your initial mail, i noticed :

# /etc/mysql/my.cnf: The global mysql configuration file.
# $Header: /var/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/dev-db/mysql/files/my.cnf-4.1,v 1.3

but that's probably some internal cvs version or something, right ?

could it be that you have updated mysql from 4.x at some point recently ?

you could try looking at the db (especially statistics table), and see 
what type does 'url' has.
if it is "varchar", try to change it to varbinary(255) and see whether 
that helps a bit.

of course, doublecheck that you have a good backup before changing the db ;)
...
-- 
  Rich