Recommended versions of PHP and MySQL for SMF?

[alvinleephd]

Currently running MySQL 4.0.17... not sure about the PHP version but I'd like the recommended versions that would be best for SMF performance..

My forums have been slowing down quite a bit and I suspect it's a software problem rather than a network or hardware problem.

My forums usually load at 0.x-x.0 seconds, where 0.0x should probably be ideal since it's a small 150 member forum, and it's hosted on a quite powerful VPS from powerVPS.com on a dual opteron server. 

It is the power-1 plan: http://powervps.com/directadmin-vps.php

Here is a URL to the forums: http://worthlessforums.com, login: test/test

Any help would be appreciated

[[Unknown]]

I'd recommend MySQL 4.0.24 or 4.1.10, PHP 4.3.11 or 5.0.4.  In other words, the latest versions.

I'd also recommend the latest version of eAccelerator, or similar acceleration software (not Zend.)

I assume you have shell access - right?  What are the load averages usually? (you can find out by typing "uptime".)

-[Unknown]

[alvinleephd]

Load Average   1.68, 1.10, 0.78

[[Unknown]]

Typically, you don't want load averages above 1.00.  What the above means is that in the last minute, the load average was 1.68 (averaged.)  In the last five, it was 1.10 (probably mainly because of the last minute averaging in there so high.)  For the period of fifteen minutes, it's 0.78, which isn't good, but isn't that bad considering the 1.10 being averaged in there.

Do you have any sort of PHP accelerator installed?  You can find out simply by typing:

$ php -v

Some accelerators can decrease load by a factor of 10, but that's fairly rare.  Halving your load averages is much more common, and very likely.

How much memory is being used on your server?  You can find out with this command:

$ free

If a lot of swap is being used, this is a bad thing.  Swap usage will slow down your site a lot.

Another thing to try is checking the Apache error log from time to time, to make sure it's not logging segfaults or various other problems.  I've noticed a lot of hosts, actually, having segfault issues lately - we even had them here for a period, because our access logs were full.

-[Unknown]

[Thantos]

Hey [Unknown] could you also give some recommended modules for PHP?

[[Unknown]]

Well... mysql and session are required.  The, gd, pspell, iconv, and openssl are recommended and may be used if available.

-[Unknown]

[alvinleephd]

Okay, well I contacted the server company about it and they did some tweaking and now the load average is down to 0.12, 0.12, 0.11.  Which is significantly better.  SMF seems to load a bit faster, but not by much.  Still lags a bit but still faster than before.  They said that the problem was that I am using a very high amount of mySQL resources, which is strange since my forum is pretty small, at only 150 some odd members.  I don't think a small SMF forum should be slowing down the server, I may have to investigate a bit and see the resources used by the users on my server.

[[Unknown]]

Interesting.  You may wish to ask your host to provide details, show you what queries (if any) are eating up resources.

Page created in 2.408 seconds with 11 queries.

Load times like that are not, usually, caused by queries.  If they are, it means that something is wrong with the tables in your database.  If you can get me a few sample process lists where queries are taking more than 2 seconds, I can probably diagnose what might be wrong.

Pages should not load that slowly.

Make sure you have "check size every time" disabled for avatars, as well.

-[Unknown]

[alvinleephd]

If you can get me a few sample process lists where queries are taking more than 2 seconds, I can probably diagnose what might be wrong.

Hello, I'm not sure what you mean.  Do you want me to give you an example where it takes more than two seconds for me to load?

EDIT: I was browsing the mambo forums and people have been saying mambo is starting to use quite alot of resources.  read here: http://forum.mamboserver.com/showthread.php?t=17290&page=2&pp=10

Both of the websites on one of my users accounts are using the latest version of mambo, which seems to be using a hefty amount of resources.  And he has used up over 80% of his bandwith, so I am quite positive this is the culprit.  Because prior to creating that person's account, SMF loaded very quickly, usually in 0.0x seconds.