velocity.ini [PHPSettings] #

The block [PHPSettings] of settings/velocity.ini, with 1 setting(s).

Never edit settings/velocity.ini itself: an update replaces it. Put the settings you change in an override, which wins over the shipped file:

• settings/override/velocity.ini.append.php for every siteaccess,
• settings/siteaccess/<siteaccess>/velocity.ini.append.php for one siteaccess,
• extension/<extension>/settings/velocity.ini.append.php in an extension (read when the extension is active).

IniOptions #

Interpreter settings for the server process, one per line, exactly as they
would be written after -d.

The opcode cache is here because /etc/php.d/99-no-opcache-cli.ini disables it
for every command-line PHP on this machine. That file is a system-wide
decision affecting every site on the box and is deliberately left alone; this
asks for the cache for this process only.

Measured on a content page, four workers, requests round-robined between
servers so that drift during the run hits all of them equally:

none (today) 526.6 ms 1.9 req/s baseline
opcache 390.8 ms 2.6 req/s +25.8%

• no timestamp checks 390.0 ms 2.6 req/s +25.9%
• interned strings 32M 387.4 ms 2.6 req/s +26.4%
• tracing JIT 416.7 ms 2.4 req/s +20.9%

So: the cache alone is the win. Timestamp checks cost nothing measurable and
are worth keeping, because turning them off means an edited file is ignored
until the service restarts. Tracing JIT is slower than no JIT on this
workload and is deliberately absent.

The timestamp checks only happen with revalidate_freq=0. The cache compares
timestamps once revalidate_freq seconds of request time have passed, and a
command-line process takes that time once, when it starts; every worker
inherits it from the parent. With the default of 2 no worker ever looked
again, so a PHP file the kernel rewrites under the same name -- expiry.php,
the content language cache, compiled templates -- was served as it was when
a worker first compiled it, until the service restarted. A cache clear from
the command line then did nothing. With 0 the file is checked on every
include, which costs nothing measurable here: the server takes a stat of each
include anyway.
Memory: 512 MB for scripts and 64 MB for interned strings. The help center's index files are 18-24 MB each
per language, and with 256/32 the interned strings buffer was full after a few help requests (measured on
a development installation, 2026-10-20: 32.0 of 32.0 MB, 141.6 of 256 MB used three minutes after a restart). The memory is
shared by every worker of an instance and reserved, not used, until it fills.
file_update_protection=0 for the same reason: the cache does not keep a script
changed less than file_update_protection seconds before the REQUEST's start,
and a worker's request started when the worker did. Every file written after
that -- the INI caches, the override caches, the compiled templates, all
regenerated after a deploy or a cache clear -- counted as "too new" for the
worker's whole life and was compiled again on every include: the cache served
2.7% of includes (PHP-FPM, a fresh request each time: 97%) and a rendered page
took about four times the CPU of PHP-FPM. The protection is there so that a
file still being written is not kept; the server already sees to that itself,
against the time of each include: it reads an include whole (readWhole) and
drops the cache's copy of a file changed in the last two seconds (RACY_SECONDS).
APCu for the server process. The command-line default is 32 MB, where the
PHP-FPM pool beside it on this machine has 1,232 MB. Velocity keeps its
response cache's memory tier in APCu, and the SQL query cache
(querycache.ini Mode=shared) its results: in 32 MB the two evicted each
other. Measured on the demonstration server (2026-09-27): with 32 MB the query cache held ~300
results at a 51 % hit rate and a rendered front page cost 727 ms of CPU
(13 pages a second); with 256 MB, 303 ms (29-31 pages a second). The
memory is reserved, not used, until it fills.

Default: a list of 7: opcache.enable_cli=1, opcache.memory_consumption=512, opcache.max_accelerated_files=20000, opcache.interned_strings_buffer=64, opcache.revalidate_freq=0, opcache.file_update_protection=0, apc.shm_size=256M.

<?php /* #?ini charset="utf-8"?
# settings/override/velocity.ini.append.php
[PHPSettings]
# an empty "IniOptions[]" first replaces the shipped list; without it the items are added
IniOptions[]
IniOptions[]=opcache.enable_cli=1
IniOptions[]=opcache.memory_consumption=512
IniOptions[]=opcache.max_accelerated_files=20000
IniOptions[]=opcache.interned_strings_buffer=64
IniOptions[]=opcache.revalidate_freq=0
IniOptions[]=opcache.file_update_protection=0
IniOptions[]=apc.shm_size=256M
*/ ?>

Related #

• All blocks of velocity.ini
• All INI files
• The settings page

Generated by ./console exp:help:examples from settings/velocity.ini. Do not edit this page: change the source and generate again (how). Free documentation: GFDL 1.3 or later.