How to install APC on your cPanel VPS

APC (Alternative PHP Cache) is a free and open opcode cache for PHP which offers a robust framework for optimising and caching your PHP code. It can provide a considerable performance boost for your websites. Whilst it isn’t supported through cPanel’s EasyApache (like other caches such as xcache and eAccelerator), it’s quite easy to install.

Before you consider installing APC you need to ensure your PHP handler is either set to DSO or FastCGI, as unfortunately suPHP is unsupported. For the best results consider running PHP as DSO + mod_ruid2 for optimal performance and security.

To install APC please run the following from SSH:

cd /usr/local/src wget http://pecl.php.net/get/APC-3.1.9.tgz tar -zxvf APC-3.1.9.tgz cd APC-3.1.8 phpize ./configure --enable-apc --enable-apc-mmap --with-apxs --with-php-config=/usr/local/bin/php-config make make install Please note: APC 3.1.9 was the latest stable release at the time this article was written, please check http://pecl.php.net/package/APC before proceeding to ensure you install the latest version.

Following your APC install, add the following lines to your global php.ini (/usr/local/lib/php.ini) to activate it: extension="apc.so" apc.enabled=1 apc.shm_segments=1 apc.shm_size=128 Please remember that cPanel don’t provide support for APC, but the benefit it can offer and the vast amount of information available on the internet about it can certainly make it worth it.