Compiling and installing eaccelerator for PHP

Here is a short tutorial on compiling and installing eaccelerator for PHP. First off, you need root access to the server to install eaccelerator. If you do not have root access but want to use eaccelerator send your host a link to this page and explain to them why you need eaccelerator. A decent host would install it for you.

eaccelerator is an opcode cacher (caches the compiled version of php scripts so php does not have to compile it for each request of the page). It has the ability to cache in shm (shared memory) making access to this cache very fast. eaccelerator can also handle sessions (see php code below).

First step: change directory to /usr/local/src and download the latest source tarball. Make sure you get the latest. When writing this the latest was 0.9.5.3. Get the latest from http://bart.eaccelerator.net/source/
 

Bash Code:

cd /usr/local/src
wget http://bart.eaccelerator.net/source/0.9.5.3/eaccelerator-0.9.5.3.tar.bz2

Step 2: untar the downloaded file and change directory to inflated directory
 

Bash Code:

tar jfxv ./eaccelerator-0.9.5.3.tar.bz2
cd ./eaccelerator-0.9.5.3

Step 3: phpize if phpize is not in your PATH find where phpize is (locate phpize or whereis phpize) and type in its full path
 

Code:

phpize

Step 4: configure eaccelerator. In the example given, eaccelerator is built with session support as well as shm support
 

Bash Code:

./configure --with-eaccelerator-sessions --with-eaccelerator-shared-memory

Step 5: build binary
 

Bash Code:

make

Step 6: install binary
 

Bash Code:

sudo make install

*Note you have to be in /etc/sudoers (usually wheel group) to sudo, otherwise "su root" then "make install"

Step 7: Create eaccelerator tmp directory and set permissions
 

Bash Code:

mkdir /tmp/eaccelerator
chown nobody:nobody /tmp/eaccelerator
chmod 777 /tmp/eaccelerator

Step 8: Edit php.ini (locate php.ini to find your php.ini) (if nano is not installed, type "vi" in place of "nano")
 

Bash Code:

nano /usr/local/lib/php.ini

Add the following settings: MUST BE BEFORE Zend settings
 

.ini config file Code:

extension="eaccelerator.so"
eaccelerator.shm_size="32"
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="0"
eaccelerator.shm_prune_period="0"
eaccelerator.shm_only="0"
eaccelerator.compress="1"
eaccelerator.compress_level="9"

Final step: restart web server (example is apache)
 

Bash Code:

/usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl restart

*Note you might have to restart it twice. I really have no explanation for this but sometimes the first restart does not work.

Everything together (good for copy and paste into terminal):
 

Bash Code:

cd /usr/local/src
wget http://bart.eaccelerator.net/source/0.9.5.3/eaccelerator-0.9.5.3.tar.bz2
tar jfxv ./eaccelerator-0.9.5.3.tar.bz2
cd ./eaccelerator-0.9.5.3
./configure --with-eaccelerator-sessions --with-eaccelerator-shared-memory
make
sudo make install
mkdir /tmp/eaccelerator
chown nobody:nobody /tmp/eaccelerator
chmod 777 /tmp/eaccelerator
nano /usr/local/lib/php.ini
/usr/local/apache/bin/apachectl restart

Finally, check if eaccelerator is installed correctly. You can do this by running php with the flag -i. To filter output to what WE want to see, pipe the output to grep and search for eAccelerator
 

Bash Code:

php -i | grep eAccelerator

If no output is produced, then eaccelerator was not installed successfully.

Alternatively create a page called phpinfo.php containing:
 

PHP Code:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

and go to http://your.site/phpinfo.php to view it. In the box that says "This program makes use of the Zend Scripting Language Engine:" it should also say "with eAccelerator v0.9.5.3, Copyright (c) 2004-2006 eAccelerator, by eAccelerator" if it is installed successfully.


On another note, to use eaccelerator for sessions use the following PHP code:
 

PHP Code:

<?php
// check to make sure that the function exists
if( function_exists('eaccelerator_set_session_handlers') )
{
 // use eaccelerators function to set the session handlers
 eaccelerator_set_session_handlers();
}

// setting the session handlers MUST MUST MUST come before session_start();
session_start();
?>