So I decided to install some stuff to make the forum runs faster.

First was the SpeedUp mod.

This was really easy and you instantly notice the speed increases on the forum.

Now the next thing was to install Xcache.  On the older server, I’ve always had Eaccelerator  and it worked fine.  For some reason I never thought about installing one of these on the new server.  Probably because it was a quadcore and I just didn’t feel like I needed to do it which is obviously the wrong attitude.

Looking for some basic instructions I found two.

http://www.php.ph/2008/08/10/centos-5-installing-xcache-from-source/

http://www.jasonlitka.com/2006/12/20/php-caching-and-acceleration-with-xcache/

Initially I did the compile myself and everything looked good til I restarted apache.  Apache wasn’t starting up at all.  I tried it again and it still didn’t work.  Then I got lazy and decided to use the ever excellent Jason’s repo (Jason keep up the good work).

Ran yum install php-xcache

Restarted and promptly killed apache as it can’t start.  Just not getting any love tonight!

As I suspected this was due to lxadmin and since my work had support with them, I promptly got on live support.

The tech instantly knew my problem and told me to run

/script/upcp

after the yum install.  Mentioned to me that xcache was unstable.

Well after the command xcache.ini was gone from /etc/php.d/

Apparently, it got moved inside /etc/php.ini

I wasn’t sure where we were going with this so I asked the tech guy about it.

He told me to log into the LXADMIN panel and look at the php config.  Well turns out now xcache was now an option that I can enable.  So I checked the option then restarted apache and checked with phpinfo().

Well Xcache is finally listed in there.  The forum didn’t feel faster though; not like with the SpeedUP mod but I will be monitoring the load and see if it decreases as the load actually climbs a little bit during some busy time (load up to 4 or 5).

lxadmin panel is coming along nicely and I really like the support.  Especially love the way they patch things super quick.

Still prefer good ole shell though