opcache.memory_consumption configuration - php

What will happen if I set higher value for a function in php.ini, For example set 2GB to opcache.memory_consumption for a normal e-commerce web application.
opcache.memory_consumption = 2048
Below is my pod resource configuration
resources:
limits:
cpu: "1"
memory: "1Gi"
requests:
cpu: "450m"
memory: "256Mi"
If I set 2GB for OPcache itself. What will happen if it's exceed actual memory limit of the application.

From the PHP manual:
opcache.memory_consumption int
The size of the shared memory storage used by OPcache, in megabytes. The minimum permissible value is "8", which is enforced if a smaller value is set.
OK, so what is the shared memory storage used for, and why might we want more of it? As it happens, Nikita Popov, one of the most important developers of PHP's internals right now, just wrote a blog post about how opcache works. Before going into details of how, he summarises thus:
The primary purposes of opcache is to cache compilation artifacts in shared memory, to avoid the need to recompile PHP scripts on every execution.
So, the memory is used to cache the result of compiling your PHP code to an intermediate representation used internally. The amount of space needed will depend on how much compiled code you're trying to cache at once.
How do we know if it's enough? By running the opcache_get_status() function. If the memory is full, or very nearly full, there's a chance that some of your scripts aren't getting cached because they don't fit in memory. In that case, increasing the configured memory size will improve performance by caching those files.
If the memory already has plenty of space, then increasing the size further won't make any difference, other than preventing the server using that memory for other things.

Related

PHP class size vs opcache?

I have a potentially very large (several megabytes perhaps) PHP class, generated of course. Is there any setting or limitation that would cause opcache slowdown in this case?
You should check opcache.max_file_size option. This option can set a maximum file size to cache. Thus, big files can be skipped by opcode cacher. However, it defaults to 0, meaning all files will be cached.
Next option to check is opcache.max_accelerated_files. For big projects with Twig and annotations default value 2000 is not enought. Consider to increase it.
And the last one is opcache.memory_consumption. I noticed, that after reaching this limit, opcache won't add new items into the cache. So, increase it to 256M or 512M.
Few things make OPCache slow, like opcache.consistency_checks if is it enabled, OPcache will verify the cache checksum every N requests, where N is the value of this configuration directive. For your large file size i am sure it is not good idea to enable this.
Also, if you doubt that it is effecting OPCache, why can't you try tools like OpCacheGUI to check it.

About PHP’s memory usage

My PHP application on Windows+Apache has stopped with showing “Out of memory (allocated 422313984) (tried to allocate 45792935 bytes)”.
I can’t understand why it’s stopped because my machine has 4GB physical memory and I’ve set memory_limit directive for -1 in PHP.ini file. I’ve also restarted Apache.
I think 4GB is enough to allocate more than 422313984+45792935 byte memories.
Is there another setting to use memory for PHP or Apache?
I also summarize performance counter .It shows MAX memory usage was 2GB in total of machine. And the httpd process used 1.3GB.
I can’t show the code but actually the code fetches 30000 rows, 199 byte each, from DBMS and parsese into XML using simplexml_load_string() in a loop.
The code is normally finished if its data is small or shorten looping term like 30000 to 1000.
Another case is the first run after starting Apache will be succeeded.
I think some memory leak happen.
Actually I did echo PHP_INT_SIZE and PHP shows 4. So perhaps my PHP is 32-bit version.
If memory usage problem is from this version of PHP as Álvaro G. Vicario points at bellow, can I fix it by changing for 64-bit version of PHP? And how can I get to 64-bit version of PHP for Windows? I can’t find it in http://windows.php.net
«Out of memory» messages (not to be confused with «Allowed memory size exhausted» ones) always indicate that the PHP interpreter literally ran out of memory. There's no PHP or Apache setting you can tweak—the computer is just no able to feed PHP with more RAM. Common causes include:
Scripts that use too much memory.
Memory leaks or bugs in the PHP interpreter.
SimpleXML is a by no means a lightweight extension. On the contrary, its easy of use and handy features come at a cost: high resource consumption. Even without seeing a single line of code, I can assure that SimpleXML is totally unsuitable to create an XML file with 30,000 items. A PHP script that uses 2GB of RAM can only take down the whole server.
Nobody likes changing a base library in the middle of a project but you'll eventually need to do so. PHP provides a pull parser called XMLWriter. It's really not much harder to use and it provides two benefits:
It's way less resource intensive, since it doesn't create the complex object that SimpleXML uses.
You can flush partial results to file.
Can even write to file directly.
With it, I'm sure your 2 GB script can run with a few MB.

What is causing "Unable to allocate memory for pool" in PHP?

I've occasionally run up against a server's memory allocation limit, particularly with a bloated application like Wordpress, but never encountered "Unable to allocate memory for pool" and having trouble tracking down any information.
Does anyone know what this means? I've tried increasing the memory_limit without success. I also haven't made any significant changes to the application. One day there was no problem, the next day I hit this error.
Using a TTL of 0 means that APC will flush all the cache when it runs out of memory. The error don't appear anymore but it makes APC far less efficient. It's a no risk, no trouble, "I don't want to do my job" decision. APC is not meant to be used that way. You should choose a TTL high enough so the most accessed pages won't expire. The best is to give enough memory so APC doesn't need to flush cache.
Just read the manual to understand how ttl is used : http://www.php.net/manual/en/apc.configuration.php#ini.apc.ttl
The solution is to increase memory allocated to APC.
Do this by increasing apc.shm_size.
If APC is compiled to use Shared Segment Memory you will be limited by your operating system. Type this command to see your system limit for each segment :
sysctl -a | grep -E "shmall|shmmax"
To alocate more memory you'll have to increase the number of segments with the parameter apc.shm_segments.
If APC is using mmap memory then you have no limit. The amount of memory is still defined by the same option apc.shm_size.
If there's not enough memory on the server, then use filters option to prevent less frequently accessed php files from being cached.
But never use a TTL of 0.
As c33s said, use apc.php to check your config. Copy the file from apc package to a webfolder and point browser to it. You'll see what is really allocated and how it is used. The graphs must remain stable after hours, if they are completly changing at each refresh, then it means that your setup is wrong (APC is flushing everything). Allocate 20% more ram than what APC really use as a security margin, and check it on a regular basis.
The default of allowing only 32MB is ridiculously low. PHP was designed when servers were 64MB and most scripts were using one php file per page. Nowadays solutions like Magento require more than 10k files (~60Mb in APC). You should allow enough memory so most of php files are always cached. It's not a waste, it's more efficient to keep opcode in ram rather than having the corresponding raw php in file cache.
Nowadays we can find dedicated servers with 24Gb of memory for as low as $80/month, so don't hesitate to allow several GB to APC. I put 2GB out of 24GB on a server hosting 5Magento stores and ~40 wordpress website, APC uses 1.2GB. Count 64MB for Magento installation, 40MB for a Wordpress with some plugins.
Also, if you have developpment websites on the same server. Exclude them from cache.
Probably is APC related.
For the people having this problem, please specify you .ini settings. Specifically your apc.mmap_file_mask setting.
For file-backed mmap, it should be set to something like:
apc.mmap_file_mask=/tmp/apc.XXXXXX
To mmap directly from /dev/zero, use:
apc.mmap_file_mask=/dev/zero
For POSIX-compliant shared-memory-backed mmap, use:
apc.mmap_file_mask=/apc.shm.XXXXXX
solution for me:
apc.ttl=0
apc.shm_size=anything you want
edit start
warning!
#bokan indicated me that i should add a warning here.
if you have a ttl of 0 this means the every cached item can be purged immediately. so if you have a small cache size like 2mb and a ttl of 0 this would render the apc useless, because the data in the cache gets always overwritten.
lowering the ttl means only that the cache cannot become full, only with items which can't be replaced.
so you have to choose a good balance between ttl and cache size.
in my case i had a cache size of 1gb, so it was more than enough for me.
edit end
had the same issue on centos 5 with php 5.2.17 and noticed that if the
cache size is small and the ttl parameter is "high" (like 7200) while
having a lot of php files to cache, then the cache fills up quite fast
and apc doesn't find anything which it can remove because all files in
the cache still fit in the ttl.
increasing the memory size is only a part solution, you still run in
this error if you cache fills up and all files are within the ttl.
so my solution was to set the ttl to 0, so apc fills up the cache an
there is allways the possibility for apc to clear some memory for new
data.
hope that helps
edit:
see also: http://pecl.php.net/bugs/bug.php?id=16966
download http://pecl.php.net/get/APC extract and run the apc.php, there you have a nice diagram how your cache usage look like
Running the apc.php script is key to understanding what your problem is, IMO. This helped us size our cache properly and for the moment, seems to have resolved the problem.
For newbies like myself, these resources helped:
Finding the apc.ini file to make the changes recommended by c33s above, and setting recommended amounts:
http://www.untwistedvortex.com/optimizing-tuning-apc-alternate-php-cache/
Understanding what apc.ttl is:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/apc.configuration.php#ini.apc.ttl
Understanding what apc.shm_size is:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/apc.configuration.php#ini.apc.shm-size
As Bokan has mentioned, you can up the memory if available, and he is right on how counter productive setting TTL to 0 is.
NotE: This is how I fixed this error for my particular problem. Its a generic issue that can be caused by allot of things so only follow the below if you get the error and you think its caused by duplicate PHP files being loaded into APC.
The issue I was having was when I released a new version of my PHP application. Ie replaced all my .php files with new ones APC would load both versions into cache.
Because I didnt have enough memory for two versions of the php files APC would run out of memory.
There is a option called apc.stat to tell APC to check if a particular file has changed and if so replace it, this is typically ok for development because you are constantly making changes however on production its usually turned off as it was with in my case - http://www.php.net/manual/en/apc.configuration.php#ini.apc.stat
Turning apc.stat on would fix this issue if you are ok with the performance hit.
The solution I came up with for my problem is check if the the project version has changed and if so empty the cache and reload the page.
define('PROJECT_VERSION', '0.28');
if(apc_exists('MY_APP_VERSION') ){
if(apc_fetch('MY_APP_VERSION') != PROJECT_VERSION){
apc_clear_cache();
apc_store ('MY_APP_VERSION', PROJECT_VERSION);
header('Location: ' . 'http'.(empty($_SERVER['HTTPS'])?'':'s').'://'.$_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'].$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
exit;
}
}else{
apc_store ('MY_APP_VERSION', PROJECT_VERSION);
}
This worked for our guys (running a slew of Wordpress sites on the same server).
Changed memory settings in the /etc/php.d/apc.ini file. It was set to 64M, so we doubled it to 128M.
apc.shm_size=128M
Looking at the internets there can be various of causes.
In my case leaving everything default except...
apc.shm_size = 64M
...cleared the countless warnings that I was getting earlier.
I received the error "Unable to allocate memory for pool" after moving an OpenCart installation to a different server. I also tried raising the memory_limit.
The error stopped after I changed the permissions of the file in the error message to have write access by the user that apache runs as (apache, www-data, etc.). Instead of modifying /etc/group directly (or chmod-ing the files to 0777), I used usermod:
usermod -a -G vhost-user-group apache-user
Then I had to restart apache for the change to take effect:
apachectl restart
Or
sudo /etc/init.d/httpd restart
Or whatever your system uses to restart apache.
If the site is on shared hosting, maybe you must change the file permissions with an FTP program, or contact the hosting provider?
To resolve this problem set value for apc.shm_size as integer
Locate your apc.ini file (In my system apc.ini file location /etc/php5/conf.d/apc.ini) and set:
apc.shm_size = 1000
on my system i had to insert
apc.shm_size = 64M
into /usr/local/etc/php.ini
(FreeBSD 9.1)
then when i looked at apc.php (which i copied from /usr/local/share/doc/APC/apc.php to /usr/local/www/apache24/data)
i found that the cache size had increased from the default of 32M to 64M and i was no longer getting a large cache full count
references:
http://au1.php.net/manual/en/apc.configuration.php
also read Bokan's comments, they were very helpful
Monitor your Cached Files Size (you can use apc.php from apc pecl package) and increase
apc.shm_size according to your needs.
This solves the problem.

Does PHP have an inherent memory limit, beyond what I set?

Does PHP have a built-in limitation on how much memory it can use? In other words, if I have a machine with many gigs of RAM and change php.ini to allocate most of them, will scripts still hit some lower limit?
(If you're curious, the goal is to run an automatic documentation generator, written in PHP, on a very large PHP code base.)
PHP will consume as much as it has, this depends on your operating system. You can not extend the memory limit of PHP beyond what your OS has to offer.
Apart from the PHP ini directive memory_limit you are only bound by the machine's available RAM. Note that memory_limit is per script, so running multiple scripts at the same time can eventuall sum to more memory than you server has.
The maximum amount of memory per process can also be limited by the operating system and/or some configurable resource limits.
E.g. on a windows system a 32bit process is limited to 2/3/4 GB memory per process (depending on whether you use a 64bit version of windows and the setting of IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE). A 64bit process might be limited to 2GB as well (with IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE cleared).
On a linux system there are similar restrictions and often limits set via ulimit.

Increasing PHP memory_limit. At what point does it become insane?

In a system I am currently working on, there is one process that loads large amount of data into an array for sorting/aggregating/whatever. I know this process needs optimising for memory usage, but in the short term it just needs to work.
Given the amount of data loaded into the array, we keep hitting the memory limit. It has been increased several times, and I am wondering is there a point where increasing it becomes generally a bad idea? or is it only a matter of how much RAM the machine has?
The machine has 2GB of RAM and the memory_limit is currently set at 1.5GB. We can easily add more RAM to the machine (and will anyway).
Have others encountered this kind of issue? and what were the solutions?
The configuration for the memory_limit of PHP running as an Apache module to server webpages has to take into consideration how many Apache process you can have at the same time on the machine -- see the MaxClients configuration option for Apache.
If MaxClients is 100 and you have 2,000 MB of RAM, a very quick calculation will show that you should not use more than 20 MB *(because 20 MB * 100 clients = 2 GB or RAM, ie the total amount of memory your server has)* for the memory_limit value.
And this is without considering that there are probably other things running on the same server, like MySQL, the system itself, ... And that Apache is probably already using some memory for itself.
Or course, this is also a "worst case scenario", that considers that each PHP page is using the maximum amount of memory it can.
In your case, if you need such a big amount of memory for only one job, I would not increase the memory_limit for PḦP running as an Apache module.
Instead, I would launch that job from command-line (or via a cron job), and specify a higher memory_limit specificaly in this one and only case.
This can be done with the -d option of php, like :
$ php -d memory_limit=1GB temp.php
string(3) "1GB"
Considering, in this case, that temp.php only contains :
var_dump(ini_get('memory_limit'));
In my opinion, this is way safer than increasing the memory_limit for the PHP module for Apache -- and it's what I usually do when I have a large dataset, or some really heavy stuff I cannot optimize or paginate.
If you need to define several values for the PHP CLI execution, you can also tell it to use another configuration file, instead of the default php.ini, with the -c option :
php -c /etc/phpcli.ini temp.php
That way, you have :
/etc/php.ini for Apache, with low memory_limit, low max_execution_time, ...
and /etc/phpcli.ini for batches run from command-line, with virtually no limit
This ensures your batches will be able to run -- and you'll still have security for your website (memory_limit and max_execution_time being security measures)
Still, if you have the time to optimize your script, you should ; for instance, in that kind of situation where you have to deal with lots of data, pagination is a must-have ;-)
Have you tried splitting the dataset into smaller parts and process only one part at the time?
If you fetch the data from a disk file, you can use the fread() function to load smaller chunks, or some sort of unbuffered db query in case of database.
I haven't checked up PHP since v3.something, but you also could use a form of cloud computing. 1GB dataset seems to be big enough to be processed on multiple machines.
Given that you know that there are memory issues with your script that need fixing and you are only looking for short-term solutions, then I won't address the ways to go about profiling and solving your memory issues. It sounds like you're going to get to that.
So, I would say the main things you have to keep in mind are:
Total memory load on the system
OS capabilities
PHP is only one small component of the system. If you allow it to eat up a vast quantity of your RAM, then the other processes will suffer, which could in turn affect the script itself. Notably, if you are pulling a lot of data out of a database, then your DBMS might be require a lot of memory in order to create result sets for your queries. As a quick fix, you might want to identify any queries you are running and free the results as soon as possible to give yourself more memory for a long job run.
In terms of OS capabilities, you should keep in mind that 32-bit systems, which you are likely running on, can only address up to 4GB of RAM without special handling. Often the limit can be much less depending on how it's used. Some Windows chipsets and configurations can actually have less than 3GB available to the system, even with 4GB or more physically installed. You should check to see how much your system can address.
You say that you've increased the memory limit several times, so obviously this job is growing larger and larger in scope. If you're up to 1.5Gb, then even installing 2Gb more RAM sounds like it will just be a short reprieve.
Have others encountered this kind of
issue? and what were the solutions?
I think you probably already know that the only real solution is to break down and spend the time to optimize the script soon, or you'll end up with a job that will be too big to run.

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