Does eAccelerator Really Work?

WHMCS-Matt · #1 04-22-2006, 08:43 AM

Hi,

I'm interested to know if anyone uses eAccelerator and does it really perform as they say it will do:

Quote:

It increases the performance of PHP scripts by caching them in their compiled state, so that the overhead of compiling is almost completely eliminated. It also optimizes scripts to speed up their execution. eAccelerator typically reduces server load and increases the speed of your PHP code by 1-10 times.
http://www.eaccelerator.net/

From reading their site, it seems there are no reasons not to install it but are there any bad points or side-effects - like do Ioncube encoded scripts still work with it?

Any input is appreciated.

Thanks!

FluffyTigger · #2 04-22-2006, 08:50 AM

Yes it really work, and work with ioncube.

On some very heavy pages things goes down from like 1.5 to .7 seconds generation time on mine.

The bad part is you need to recompile the thing when upgrading PHP, and I believe it crashed on me twice, had to restart apache.

**layer0** · #3 04-22-2006, 08:50 AM

AFAIK there are only 2 scenarios in which you can have eAccelerator.

- Zend Optimizer + eA as a PHP extension (does not work as zend extension any more) - must have PHP running as a module or fastcgi

- eA as a PHP extension on it's own - must have PHP as a module or fastcgi

As you see, it will not work [too well] with IonCube, but IMHO the performance benefits eAccelerator gives heavily outweighs anything you'll get out of IonCube.

*Note* I have seen rare cases where it was installed with IonCube, but generally it will cause Apache to fail if you use IonCube.

Quote:

Originally Posted by FluffyTigger

Yes it really work, and work with ioncube.

On some very heavy pages things goes down from like 1.5 to .7 seconds generation time on mine.

The bad part is you need to recompile the thing when upgrading PHP, and I believe it crashed on me twice, had to restart apache.

Well, I do my own PHP compiles and I don't need to recompile it. Of course if you use cPanel's easyapache then you will definitely have problems - but I've always recommended against that.

freeflight2 · #4 04-22-2006, 12:46 PM

EA does work

generates here about 120M page views/mo on a dual xeon vs. 25M without it. We never had any crashes with... I used to manually compile it+install it but there are also rpm packages available:
- get the latest ea.rpm
- rpm -i ea.rpm

sailorFred · #5 04-22-2006, 01:46 PM

If you're running on multi-core or multi-CPU, or 64 bits, make sure they've fixed it well enough. As of November they were still recommending you don't run on it on those systems.

APC works.

**layer0** · #6 04-22-2006, 02:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sailorFred

If you're running on multi-core or multi-CPU, or 64 bits, make sure they've fixed it well enough. As of November they were still recommending you don't run on it on those systems.

APC works.

I'm running it on a Dual Proc. system just fine. Note that APC doesn't work in PHP environments with Zend Optimizer installed.

WHMCS-Matt · #7 04-22-2006, 02:51 PM

Thanks for your comments. So would you guys recommend installing eAccelerator on a server where I also need to be running Ioncube encoded scripts?

**layer0** · #8 04-22-2006, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mwsolutions

Thanks for your comments. So would you guys recommend installing eAccelerator on a server where I also need to be running Ioncube encoded scripts?

No, probably not. Install it on servers where you don't need Ion.

ranjitbhar · #9 04-22-2006, 03:58 PM

I was able to run ioncube and APC without issues, but did not try eaccelerator, and yes APC does help a lot

phpa · #10 04-23-2006, 04:14 AM

On the issue with EA and other extensions, EA is written to only work with extensions whose names have been coded into the startup routine; it does a strcmp against module names and bails on unrecognised ones. EA didn't have a check for the ionCube Loader, but patches exist that add the test. It's a trivial couple of lines, and then EA and the ionCube Loader run fine.

APC doesn't run with ZO because you have to use some tricks to make this work as ZO blocks any unrecognised extensions, and APC presumably don't implement those.

ionCube IPS, now entering beta test, offers high performance acceleration of regular and encoded files, being ideal for servers with encoded files.

**net** · #11 04-23-2006, 09:33 AM

You can still use EA+ZendOptimizer+Ioncube. Just don't install ioncube server wide, you can just put it per account where ioncube is needed then ioncube will automatically load for that account/domain.

WHMCS-Matt · #12 04-23-2006, 09:47 AM

I've read there is a "fix" for running Ioncube and eAccelerator together on the Ioncube Forums but they said to get it from eAccelerator - does anyone know anything about this or where to find it?