Hey there! Today we wanted to give you a brief overview on how setup APC on our Media Temple dedicated virtual server, since sometimes, it’s just a pain in our A%#.

APC optimizes PHP intermediate code and caches data and compiled code from the PHP bytcode compiler in shared memory[1]. Using APC our PHP web applications run faster and it also give us the ability to cache our own data (like query results, html buckets, etc.).

Note that this tutorial is entirely based on a (dv) Dedicated Virtual server from Media Temple with SSH access enabled (if you already have SSH access enabled for your server, please makre sure to also read this tutorial).

The very first thing we need to do is connect to our server using SSH.

Once we logged in, we issue the following command to go to our src folder:

[root@mydvserver ~]# cd /usr/local/src/

Next, we download the latest stable version of APC (as of Jan 30, 2010):

[root@mydvserver src]# wget http://pecl.php.net/get/APC-3.0.10.tgz

--09:57:33--  http://pecl.php.net/get/APC-3.0.10.tgz
Resolving pecl.php.net... 76.75.200.106
Connecting to pecl.php.net|76.75.200.106|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 85818 (84K) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: `APC-3.0.10.tgz'
100%[=======================>] 85,818       246K/s   in 0.3s
09:57:34 (246 KB/s) - `APC-3.0.10.tgz' saved [85818/85818]

The output tell us that the file was download succesfully, now we need to unpack the file and get his contents, to do so, we issue the following command:

[root@mydvserver src]# gunzip -c APC-3.0.10.tgz | tar xf -

next, we switch to the newly created APC folder

[root@mydvserver src]# cd APC-3.0.10

and then, we prepare the build environment for the APC installation:

[root@mydvserver APC-3.0.10]# /usr/bin/phpize

now our APC is ready to be configured so we issue the following command and wait, it might make take a few seconds (the \ means the line was broke here only for the space, you should write the entire command in one single line):

[root@mydvserver APC-3.0.10]# ./configure -enable-apc -enable-apc-mmap \
-with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs -with-php-config=/usr/bin/php-config

next, we install APC:

[root@mydvserver APC-3.0.10]# make
[root@mydvserver APC-3.0.10]# make install

Now APC is installed on our server and ready to be used, the next step we need to take is to tell PHP to start using this module, to do so, we create a new file for this module in the modules folder:

[root@mydvserver APC-3.0.10]# cd /etc/php.d/
[root@mydvserver APC-3.0.10]# vi apc.ini

and inside this file we enter the following (make sure to hit i first to go in insert mode):

extension=apc.so

to save the change, press the Esc key and type

:wq

now, we just need to ask Apache to reload the configuration (so we don’t have to actually restart the web server), to do so, we issue the following command:

[root@mydvserver APC-3.0.10]# apachectl graceful

Now APC is installed and running on our (dv) server.

If you want to see some nice stats, you can copy de apc.php file in /usr/local/src/APC-3.0.19/ to a public folder and then access the apc.php file and you will see a nice stats page like this one:

So that’s it! Pretty quick right?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_PHP_Cache#Alternative_PHP_Cache

On Sunday, February 7, 2010 · 2 Comments »