wiki:apc_cache

Version 4 (modified by Jamie McClelland, 15 years ago) (diff)

--

PHP Optimizing software (APC

May First/People Link uses the Alternative PHP Cache PHP optimizer on all standard servers.

Normally, everytime a user requests a PHP file on a web server, the server has to "compile" the php script - which means translate it into code that the processor can execute. This compilation process can be CPU intensive on busy machines. APC stores compiled PHP files in memory and re-serves the compiled files rather than re-compiling them for every request. This approach saves a lot of CPU time, making the scripts run faster.

There are two good articles on the success of APC with Drupal sites: One by Jeffg and another on 2bits.

In addition, I've found a couple references to segfaults caused by APC and PHP, which we should be wary of.

If you experience trouble with APC (which will look like segfault lines in your error log), you may want to try disabling APC in your php.ini file by adding:

apc.enabled=0