For the last website I am working on, I figured I would try to setup a php accelerator (even though I don’t think it would really be required for the first few weeks after the launch).
So below are the steps I had to follow, on my Debian server.
Installation
1) PEAR, the php extension manager, must be installed
apt-get install php-pear
2) php-dev, which provide building tools (like phpize), also
apt-get install php-dev
3) apache2-dev, which provide apxs (used to build to apc module), as well
apt-get install apache2-dev
4) then finally, install apc
pecl install apc
PHP configuration
1) Enable the module in php.ini:
extension=apc.so
2) Set the following values
[apc] apc.enabled=1 apc.shm_size=30 apc.ttl=7200 apc.user_ttl=7200
Results
A very quick test show me an improvement of the server-side processing time of a factor of about 2. (without any tweeking) Not bad!
I will probably play around a bit more in a few weeks.
sources:
http://fr3.php.net/apc
http://www.agnivo.com/tech/cache-php-scripts-with-apc-pecl-module-100.html
