Accelerating PHP with eAccelerator

eAccelerator is a further development from mmcache PHP Accelerator & Encoder. It increases performance of PHP scripts by caching them in compiled state, so that the overhead of compiling is almost completely eliminated.

• Prior to installing check that php-devel package is installed.
  
• Download via http://eaccelerator.net/DownloadEaccelerator
  
• Run the below commands to compile and configure:
  

    # export PHP_PREFIX="/usr"
    # $PHP_PREFIX/bin/phpize
    # ./configure --enable-eaccelerator=shared --with-php-config=$PHP_PREFIX/bin/php-config
    # make
    

  Note:
  You must specify the real prefix where PHP is installed in the "export" command. It may be "/usr", "/usr/local", or something else. You can find out by running `which phpize`.

  If you get - "You should update your 'aclocal.m4' by running aclocal." when you run phpize, then you should run `aclocal`.

• Run `make install` to install the application.
  
• The "eaccelerator.so" shared extension gets installed in /usr/lib/php4 directory.
  
• Copy the "eaccelerator.ini" to the "/etc/php.d" directory and modify the default values as needed.
  
• If php has not been configured with "--with-config-file-scan-dir=/etc/php.d" then you will be missing the "/etc/php.d" directory. In which case copy the contents of the "eaccelerator.ini" to "/etc/php.ini".
  

    zend_extension="/usr/lib/php4/eaccelerator.so"
    eaccelerator.shm_size="64"
    eaccelerator.cache_dir="/tmp/eaccelerator"
    eaccelerator.enable="1"
    eaccelerator.optimizer="1"
    eaccelerator.check_mtime="1"
    eaccelerator.debug="0"
    eaccelerator.filter=""
    eaccelerator.shm_max="0"
    eaccelerator.shm_ttl="3600"
    eaccelerator.shm_prune_period="0"
    eaccelerator.shm_only="0"
    eaccelerator.compress="1"
    eaccelerator.compress_level="9
    eaccelerator.admin.name="yourusername"
    eaccelerator.admin.password="yourpassword"
    

• Create the cache directory and change the owner to the user that apache runs as:

     # mkdir /tmp/eaccelerator
     # chown apache /tmp/eaccelerator
     # chmod 0700 /tmp/eaccelerator
    

• eAccelerator can be managed through web interface script eaccelerator.php. Copy the eaccelerator.php and eaccelerator_password.php file in the eaccelerator directory to a directory that is web-accessible. For security reasons it is recommended to restrict the usage of this script by your local IP.
• Before you can access the eaccelerator.php page, you will need to create the eAccelerator admin username and password for it:
  

    # php -q eaccelerator_password.php
    

  Add the given output admin name and password to the "/etc/php.d/eaccelerator.ini" file.

• Restart Apache.
  
• Verify installation is working by cheking with a phpinfo file. The contents of the phpinfo file should show similar information mentioning eAccelerator:
  

    This program makes use of the Zend Scripting Language Engine:
  Zend Engine v1.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2003 Zend Technologies with eAccelerator v0.9.2, 
  Copyright (c) 2004-2005 eAccelerator, by eAccelerator