Board Optimization - [DBTech] vB Optimise 2.0.1 (Lite)

vB Optimise Lite

This is ported from my original version released for vBulletin 3.8 located here. In this release I have re-coded vB Optimise from the gound and focused stability over features.

Professional version & feature list available @ www.DragonByte-Tech.com/forum
Priority support for Lite version is handled at the Developers Website.


What does it do?

vB Optimise is intended to optimise vBulletin software by integrating several PHP "cachers" and handling data before vBulletin. This works by encountering and handling data prior to vBulletin in order to skip the arbitary execution that would be more server intensive.

Real-Life Statistics

We've teamed up with some Big Forums to show you the impact of vB Optimise, you can view this public chart which shows both our statistics and theirs:

View Public vB Optimise Resource Statistics

Features - Lite

• Supported Extensions
  • APC
  • eAccelerator
  • Memcache
  • XCache
  • WinCache
  • Filecache
• Style Cacher
  Caches style data to globally reduce a query within all vBulletin forum-based pages.
• Template Cacher
  Caches template data to globally reduce a query within all vBulletin forum-based pages.
• Datastore Cacher
  Forces custom datastore items from modifications (including those from vB's blogs) to use your configured Datastore Cache method instead of being forced into the database. This reduces page queries by where affected.
• vB CMS Template Caching
  (Automatic) Corrects many uncached templates within vB CMS to reduce upto 20+ queries on CMS pages (number varies based on content).
• Optimal Settings Check
  Provides a quick interface to identify possible settings which can be changed on your forum for further optimisation.
• Self-System Tester
  Provides a relatively straight-forward system check to ensure your vB Optimise installation works fully.
• Automatic Cache Flusher
  Automatically flushes cache within the Admin CP based on specific triggers to make sure content does not remain stale on your forum.
• XCache Authentification
  Supports XCache Admin Authentification by allowing you specify the username/password in a configuration if needs be.

Features - Pro

• Notices Cacher
  Caches users dismissed notices to reduce a near-global query within all vBulletin forum-based pages.
• Showgroups Cacher
  Caches the showgroups query which becomes more intensive as your user-base grows.
• Forum Display Query Enhancement
  Enhances a stock vBulletin query within Forum Display to speed up the page.
• Forum Home WOL Cache
  Caches Forum Home "Who's Online" to remove an intensive query and allow larger sites to display this data without impact.
• vB Cache Override (Feature not available on vBulletin 3)
  Ability to override vBulletins new built-in database cacher for the CMS / Forum Sidebar Blocks to remove anything from 1 to 20+ queries based on your content.
• Full Guest Caching
  Ability to cache entire pages and serve them saving not only hundreds of queries but upto 90% of CPU processing towards Guests.
• Statistical Resource Savings
  Ability to see just exactly how many queries per day vB Optimise has saved your database. You'll be surprised at the numbers.
• Forum Resource Statistic
  Shows off vB Optimise resource saving statistics directly within forumhome statistics.
• ....and more!

Release Notes

If you've used vB Optimise before you'll be aware the previous version had phrase caching, however this caused complications with the way phrases are used within vBulletin so it has not been ported over at this time.


Available Translations
v1.6.0 French - Thanks to finereader

Change Log

[>>] Version 2.0.1
No change, just keeping in sync with vB 3.8/Pro

[>>] Version 1.6.1
Automatic Cache Flusher has additional parameters to make sure no data is stale
Resolved Bug: Potential PHP error when using eAccelerator which cannot flush within Admin CP on certain actions

[>>] Version 1.6.0
New OpCode Cacher Support: WinCache

[>>] Version 1.5.0
Resolved Bug: Style cache may have fetched ID 0 instead of correct file
Resolved Bug: Filecache permissions may not have worked
Optimisation: Re-wrote some base code to enhance operations.

[>>] Version 1.0.1
Added XCache Authentification Support
Added Filecache Support

Support

Priority support will be handled at DBTech.

FAQ

Q: I have WinCache installed, but vB Optimise tells me it's not?
A: WinCache only introduced OpCode support in version 1.1, if you're using version 1.0.x you will need to upgrade.

Q: I'm using the XCache method, flushing doesn't work?
A: If you have XCache authentification, turn the admin option on within vB Optimise Settings, then edit ./vboptimise/config.php and specify your XCache username/password. Alternatively you can disable XCache authentification within php.ini:

xcache.admin.enable_auth = Off

Q: I have eAccelerator installed, but vB Optimise tells me it's not?
A: eAccelerator does not provide the caching extension by default, you will need to recompile PHP with additional flags. For more information read eAccelerator documentation located here: http://eaccelerator.net/wiki/CompileConfiguration (Specifically look at: with-eaccelerator-shared-memory)

[kmohamed]

Originally Posted by DragonByte Tech

I assume you're running xcache?

This isn't uncommon on XCache setups, you will need to set up the authentication properly (xcache has a really strange default setting)

To do that, see deceptors posts here:
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=137
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=141

Hope that helps!

To everyone else - Deceptor will help you with your issues when he gets online, I'm just doing what i can - Not my product.

Iain

again thanx for replacing Deceptor you been great so far
i am not using XCache, i am only using memecache? any ideas?

[Deceptor]

Originally Posted by kmohamed

again thanx for replacing Deceptor you been great so far
i am not using XCache, i am only using memecache? any ideas?

If Memcache is failing to store data, the instance may have too little space or ran out. Restart your memcache daemon process with more allocated space (or ask your host to do this), without doing so vB Optimise will have no impact as cache will never be stored.

[kmohamed]

Originally Posted by Deceptor

If Memcache is failing to store data, the instance may have too little space or ran out. Restart your memcache daemon process with more allocated space (or ask your host to do this), without doing so vB Optimise will have no impact as cache will never be stored.

thank you again

[Deceptor]

No problem

[stardotstar]

Hi there Guys, I seem to be in the same boat as the above poster.
I have a linux server (my own) and am running memcache but I get the following two errors with the system test:

Running Test: Store Cache
Your Opcache Operator extension is functioning, however it is unable to store data. Please check your extension configuration.
Running Test: Fetch Cache
Your Opcache Operator extension is functioning, however it is unable to store data. Please check your extension configuration.

I have restarted the memcached but not changed anything yet - could someone please comment on the current config:

from php.ini

additional .ini files parsed 	/etc/php/apache2-php5/ext-active/memcache.ini 
..
memcache
memcache support	enabled
Version 	3.0.4
Revision 	$Revision: 1.83.2.36 $

Directive	Local Value	Master Value
memcache.allow_failover	1	1
memcache.chunk_size	32768	32768
memcache.compress_threshold	20000	20000
memcache.default_port	11211	11211
memcache.hash_function	crc32	crc32
memcache.hash_strategy	consistent	consistent
memcache.lock_timeout	15	15
memcache.max_failover_attempts	20	20
memcache.protocol	ascii	ascii
memcache.redundancy	1	1
memcache.session_redundancy	2	2

helios init.d # vi /etc/php/apache2-php5/ext-active/memcache.ini 

extension=memcache.so
memcache.allow_failover=true
memcache.max_failover_attempts=20
memcache.chunk_size=32768
memcache.default_port=11211
memcache.hash_strategy=consistent
memcache.hash_function=crc32
memcache.redundancy=1
memcache.session_redundancy=2
memcache.protocol=ascii

What should I check and/or change please?
TIA
Will


edit - sorry I see I have found this error here in the vb4 mod thread - I have this implemented in vb3.8.x

[Deceptor]

stardotstar - No worries about the version confusion As for the cache issue, what is the command for starting the memcached service you're using?

[stardotstar]

Hi Deceptor, that is a good question - its installed on my Gentoo Linux host and as far as I know it has been called by the init.d daemon which is a "start|restart|stop" kind of thing - I'll try and work that out...
Thanks for the fast reply.
I have looked at the /etc/conf.d/memcached file which probably defines the parameters fed to the command line when invoking the memcached daemon:

helios conf.d # cat memcached 
# Copyright 2003 Gentoo Technologies, Inc
# $Header: /var/cvsroot/gentoo-x86/net-misc/memcached/files/1.2.6/conf,v 1.1 2008/08/01 15:56:55 caleb Exp $
# memcached config file

MEMCACHED_BINARY="/usr/bin/memcached"

#Specify memory usage in megabytes (do not use letters)
#64MB is default
MEMUSAGE="512"

#User to run as
MEMCACHED_RUNAS="memcached"

#Specify maximum number of concurrent connections
#1024 is default
MAXCONN="1024"

#Listen for connections on what address?
# If this is empty, memcached will listen on 0.0.0.0
# be sure you have a firewall in place!
LISTENON="127.0.0.1"

#Listen for connections on what port?
PORT="11211"

#PID file location
# '-${PORT}.${CONF}.pid' will be appended to this!
# You do not normally need to change this.
PIDBASE="/var/run/memcached/memcached"

#Other Options
MISC_OPTS=""

So it looks like 512MB has been assigned to memcached?
Is there any way that I can check that?
In the mean time I have switched the system over to file cache and it passes all the tests - would that be less efficient than memcache?

I have put this in place with yslow and members are noticing an improvement - if I can get this to be as efficient as possible I will certainly seriously consider the commercial version - thank you for making this available in the Lite format!


[edit] ahhh, this is probably what you want to see:

106      18722  0.5  0.5  45208 18580 ?        Ssl  May18   4:23 /usr/bin/memcached -d -p 11211 -l 127.0.0.1 -m 512 -c 1024 -u memcached -P /var/run/memcached/memcached-11211.pid

[/edit]

[Deceptor]

Hi stardotstar,

Your configuration seems fine and the process is indeed running on localhost port 11211 which is a typical setup, and 512mb of ram is more than enough, so really it should be working.

Might seem silly asking, but I presume you've setup Memcache configuration within vbulletins /includes/config.php?

[stardotstar]

Doh Doh Doh, double Doh;
I never ever realised that it needed configuring in my vB configs.
I am googling how to do that properly now - the current config has the entire section rem'd out.
I guess this in itself will improve the performance of my site?
Thank you!!

[stardotstar]

OK I have it all configured (I have two boards so I set the prefix for this one to something unique) and saved the config.php
Now I have gone back to the admin cp and changed the vB optimise setting to memcache and run the tests and all passes.
I can see memcache running when I top the server.
I guess I'll wait and see what my users say.
Great support! Thank you!


[UPDATE]
I have come across a strange problem on the boards when the new config.php is in place...
When the memcache config is in place and people (including myself) try to edit posts they get an error when attempting to save the edit:

vBulletin Message
1. maxloggedin
cancel changes

I have googled this and its very rare and in the past has only been responded to by asking people to turn products off to search for an offending product.
I turned the recent products off (including this one) to no avail
Then I copied my old (non-memcache) config back into place and the problem went away.
I changed my config to remove the section for a prefix for caching in case this was causing trouble but made no difference.
I have therefore returned to the old config in which memcache was disabled.
Can I get some thoughts on this as it is clearly associated with my optimisation setup as per the recommendations for this product to work - but - and I stress this - clearly not the product itself.
I have posted this in a thread on vb.com that I necromanced for this discussion:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...03#post1982603

for the record here is the original config.php:

	// ****** DATASTORE CACHE CONFIGURATION *****
	// Here you can configure different methods for caching datastore items.
	// vB_Datastore_Filecache  - to use includes/datastore/datastore_cache.php
	// vB_Datastore_APC - to use APC
	// vB_Datastore_XCache - to use XCache
	// vB_Datastore_Memcached - to use a Memcache server, more configuration below
// $config['Datastore']['class'] = 'vB_Datastore_Filecache';

	// ******** DATASTORE PREFIX ******
	// If you are using a PHP Caching system (APC, XCache, eAccelerator) with more
	// than one set of forums installed on your host, you *may* need to use a prefix
	// so that they do not try to use the same variable within the cache.
	// This works in a similar manner to the database table prefix.
// $config['Datastore']['prefix'] = '';

	// It is also necessary to specify the hostname or IP address and the port the server is listening on
/*
$config['Datastore']['class'] = 'vB_Datastore_Memcached';
$i = 0;
// First Server
$i++;
$config['Misc']['memcacheserver'][$i]		= '127.0.0.1';
$config['Misc']['memcacheport'][$i]			= 11211;
$config['Misc']['memcachepersistent'][$i]	= true;
$config['Misc']['memcacheweight'][$i]		= 1;
$config['Misc']['memcachetimeout'][$i]		= 1;
$config['Misc']['memcacheretry_interval'][$i] = 15;
*/

and the one I implemented to make memcache work with vB (and get the most out of vb optimise lite naturally enough;

	// ****** DATASTORE CACHE CONFIGURATION *****
	// Here you can configure different methods for caching datastore items.
	// vB_Datastore_Filecache  - to use includes/datastore/datastore_cache.php
	// vB_Datastore_APC - to use APC
	// vB_Datastore_XCache - to use XCache
	// vB_Datastore_Memcached - to use a Memcache server, more configuration below
	// $config['Datastore']['class'] = 'vB_Datastore_Filecache';

	// ******** DATASTORE PREFIX ******
	// If you are using a PHP Caching system (APC, XCache, eAccelerator) with more
	// than one set of forums installed on your host, you *may* need to use a prefix
	// so that they do not try to use the same variable within the cache.
	// This works in a similar manner to the database table prefix.
$config['Datastore']['prefix'] = 'heli';

	// It is also necessary to specify the hostname or IP address and the port the server is listening on

$config['Datastore']['class'] = 'vB_Datastore_Memcached';
$i = 0;
// First Server
$i++;
$config['Misc']['memcacheserver'][$i]		= '127.0.0.1';
$config['Misc']['memcacheport'][$i]			= 11211;
$config['Misc']['memcachepersistent'][$i]	= true;
$config['Misc']['memcacheweight'][$i]		= 1;
$config['Misc']['memcachetimeout'][$i]		= 1;
$config['Misc']['memcacheretry_interval'][$i] = 15;

Further research finds this thread:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showt...th-maxloggedin