I just tested with junctions as well. Apache reads them just fine. Use this command, after downloading junction.exe from Microsoft.

newvbdir will now be a symlink to oldvbdir, including all files and directories recursively. It seems to work the same way as a hard link, if you change the contents of either file it changes the other.

The bottom line is both junctions and hard links should be tested to see if the opcode caching only caches one copy of the file or multiple copies.

Don't forget what you have to do with the config files.

I tried this first. It seems as if the cache sees just one copy, thus theorically it would work. Practically however you can't use it for vBulletin because of the configuration file which can't be separated with junctions. junctions would make sense though if you had your board files in a different disk or folder - which may become handy when moving a site.

Now I'll try the fsutil solution.

Well, you probably can if you follow the directions in this mod. You have to create a configs folder in the includes directory. Place your site configs in there and rename them uniquely. Then use the config file in this mod.

I've tried now both systems (junction, fsutil) on a clean test environment. Both systems are not cached once, but as if they were separate files. A clean 3.7.0 installation and copy produce each about 2.55 MB of uncompressed eAccelerator cached files on forum home (index.php).

• The junction feature requires to rename the config.php files and is a one-liner.
• The fsutil feature replaces the single files with a hardlink to the common files folder, and allows thus to keep some of the files in their original state. Thus, renaming of config.php and other files are not necessary. fsutil requires an utility to execute recursively. Please allow me to test it a little before releasing ;)
• Both features require to repeat the junction/fsutil calls on each copy. It is not possible to copy and paste those links, and doing so, will just retrieve the original files.

Well, if they are not caching in your windows environment, I don't see much of a point other than speedier upgrades. Getting Linux of course would solve all of this for you. ;) (Couldn't resist)...

This mod is great :)

This utility automates the use if fsutil on Windows Servers. It has been tested on XP Pro and Windows Server 2003, and comes with the full source for Visual Basic 6.0.

Please try it first on a test environment and make a backup before linking the files.

I will not assume any responsibility for your test and/or production environment! Use on your own risk.

I wonder if APC handles junctions/hardlinks on Windows the same way eAccelerator seems to-- seeing the files as the same or different files. On the other hand, maybe this could be a feature request for eAccelerator/APC, maybe something can be tweaked in their code to make them recognize that hardlinks and junctions actually refer to the same file.

very interesting. will try it.

this seems amazing, I'm just starting to understand its full extents.

By the way, I'm studying the integration of two boards. They are on separate webservers and I plan to have independents database servers for each of them. It seems this mod can help me combine both webservers so both boards can use one logical webserver which is the load balancing between the current ones, but won't help me integrate users and passwords since DBs will still be on separate machines, am I right?

Yes, that is correct. This will really do nothing as far as integration goes.

So if 2 forums have the same products that required uploads, it's best to include those files?

Yes, you can add them.

When referring to Windows, are we referring to Windows running IIS or Apache (or is it not relevant)? If Apache, would using the alias command work?

Alias "/site1/forums" "C:/htdocs/forums"
Alias "/site2/forums" "C:/htdocs/forums"
Alias "/site3/forums" "C:/htdocs/forums"

Has anyone tried NtFS link? http://sourceforge.net/project/platf...roup_id=161885

linkd? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/205524

NTFS Link creates hardlinks and junctions and linkd creates junctions. Both of these have been confirmed to not work. Well, they work but they are cached as if they were separate files.

Yeah, I doubt there is a Windows solution that will offer any cache relief. Of course, you could always go Linux, but who wants to start that discussion!

This might actually be a bug in the caching code that is not recoginzing Windows hardlinks/junctions in the same way it recognizes Linux symlinks. Since I use linux, I won't be pursuing this, but for those who have Windows servers, it might be worthwhile to submit this as a bug/feature request to APC/Xcache or whatever you're using.

If it happens with the big three opcode cache methods, I would then think it was something native with Windows. I dunno, not a .dll head here.. :)

Just wondering, are users/members of each forum independent? Or are they linked?

Independent. This does not share any information between forums. It only uses the same SOURCE code, not data..

So you have to use windows to get this to work? Does it work apache? Or litespeedtech?

It does NOT work with Windows.

Or all 3 of those opcode caching methods were designed for *nix operating systems.

can you it's for single forum on my VPS?
is it can use for 3.6.x ?
will it speed up 4room?

sorry my bad english

If you're only running one forum, there's no reason to use this.

Precisely!

So if all your sites don't use photoplog for example, you would just leave photoplog files in the original forums directory?

Edit: Just went through with it. Doesn't seem to work with 3.8. It doesn't like including the config.php or something. I always get this error: Configuration: includes/config.php exists, but is not in the 3.6+ format. Please convert your config file via the new config.php.new.

If I rename config_me.php (which is in configs folder) and put it in the includes folder as config.php it works. It's a 3.8 config file anyways. Not sure why $config = 0 and it's spitting that error.

I'd be willing to pay you for your time to get this to work with 3.8. I was looking forward to streamlining all my vbulletin installs into one set of files, along with some of my mods. I'm not sure if Andy is moving to 3.8 anytime soon or not, so I don't know what your game plan is with that.

I am not having any issue with it on 3.8.. Are you sure you have modified config.php correctly (as per the readme)? That is the only time I have ever seen that error is when config.php is incorrect.

Here is what I did:

Uploaded vBulletin into /home/vbcore/ (fresh files from vBulletin.com. 3.8.1)
Created a folder called configs inside the includes which is inside /home/vbcore/
Copied my config.php from /home/evo/public_html/forum/includes/ into /home/vbcore/includes/configs/ and renamed it to config_me.php
Uploaded config.php from your zip file to /home/vbcore/config.php and edited it as follows:

Along with changing my license info and putting my domain name in.

I then ran your php script and it created all the links.

I then opened my site up and got that error.

I know the config_me.php is fine, because its the same one I am using on my site right now. Plus, I renamed config_me.php to config.php and then placed it in /home/vbcore/includes/ overwriting your config.php. I then was able to get the site to load fine, using the DLS.

It's just when I use your config.php to include the file do I get that error.

I just tried this on another one of my vBulletin installs and got the exact same results. :(

Just in case anyone was wondering, I just successfully set this up under 3.8.4, and it runs perfectly fine. I'm still tweaking some things, but yeah, I'm good to go.

I wonder if this will work with my single sign on system. Got 4 forums right now and it's a pain to update all 4 forums even though all of them share the same DB.

They are all on different domains. I'm confused on how this works...but I will be testing it probably tomorrow.

Awesome idea and mod BTW

If they are on the same physical server (or cluster) then yes it will work.