APC Disabled but what is it?

APC = Alternative PHP Cache

see: http://pecl.php.net/package/APC

I've been trying to improve the really slow performance of my current D6 installation and have just entered the world of APC in the hope that will improve page load times. PHP extensions are not really my bag, and all I want to do is download an appropriate version of php_apc.dll (alas both test and live servers are Windows), but cannot get hold of the binaries, as the http://pecl4win.php.net site is offline; the Windows binaries will apparently appear later in 2009 somewhere...

So does anyone have copies of the binaries for PHP 5.2.3 or 5.2.6 or have a Dummies guide on how to generate a DLL from the PECL packages (http://pecl.php.net/package/APC)?

Sorry to be lame... I'll document my findings somewhere on the web in the hope that Google will save someone in the future too.

unfortunately, this may be more difficult on windows than on *nix.

i do know that there is a commandline pecl for the windows version of php though, so you could attempt to install the required extension by typing the following at the commandline (you my want to do this from within the directory in which pecl.exe exists in case your environment vars aren't set up properly):

pecl install apc

you will get a failure if you do not have apache's APXS installed (http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/programs/apxs.html).

good luck!

I've finally found some guidance and located the DLLs to install APC under Windows - PDF attached and DLL currently at http://downloads.php.net/pierre/. Although this solution will actually load up APC (tested with apc.php), as soon as the Drupal site is accessed, the server crashes..?

Possible problem now seems to be a conflict with Zend - which is running on Apache (why? I never downloaded it). No idea how to disable Zend - nothing in php.ini to help - so still have yet to get APC working under a Windows Server... or is there something else in Drupal I need to configure?

History repeats itself

Snorkers, did you ever find a solution to this issue and if so do you remember what it was???? I am experiencing exactly the same issue as I try to optimise a slow Drupal / UC install and nothing else has worked - I have 38 second page loads, 800ms of that is SQL queries. PHP memory is set to 128MB, MySQL caching is on ... There has to be an easier way to make a 'slightly more complex' Drupal site responsive on the admin pages (i.e. non-cached content) . This one has been plaguing me all day.

Not really a 'Devel' issue, me thinks, but I am putting my issue here simply because this is the closest I could find to my problem (i.e. APC library is working, PHP has loaded the library, it is only when one attempts to access a Drupal page that Apache restarts (I have an error of ' Parent: child process exited with status 128 -- Restarting')

Adam

Subscribing

APC has to be compiled in the environment in use. If on a shared host you'd likley have to ask them to do it for you. instructions are included in the APC from PECL.