Search slowing down SunOS server with PHP 4.0

[jans]

I have been experimenting with Zoom on my development server. After several searches, I notice that performance of the web server is slower and slower. This is effecting all pages not just searches. I see the available swap space getting smaller and smaller. I just had to restart the server which cleared up the slow performance problem. This is an old server and our new production server will be much faster but I am wondering if there is something to be done to be able to continue using Zoom on the development server.

Have you heard about this kind of problem and do I need to worry that over time the production server performance may be impacted by Zoom searches?

Development environment:
SunOS 5.7 Generic_106541-17 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-5_10
Memory: 256M real, 134M free, 113M swap in use, 578M swap free
Apache 1.3
PHP 4.0.6

Zoom files:
2655 Aug 17 10:43 zoom_catpages.zdat
60 Aug 17 10:43 zoom_cats.zdat
18585 Aug 17 10:43 zoom_datetime.zdat
35217 Aug 17 10:43 zoom_descriptions.zdat
195006 Aug 17 10:43 zoom_dictionary.zdat
58630 Aug 17 10:43 zoom_pages.zdat
895966 Aug 17 10:43 zoom_pagetext.zdat
45395 Aug 17 10:43 zoom_spelling.zdat
43469 Aug 17 10:43 zoom_titles.zdat
1393366 Aug 17 10:43 zoom_wordmap.zdat

[Ray]

You did not tell us whether you are using the PHP or CGI version of Zoom. Since you gave us the PHP version number on your server however, I will presume that you are using the PHP version.

Your PHP version is fairly old, so the first thing that's worth addressing might be to update to a newer version. The latest versions of PHP is 5.1.5 (or 4.4.4 if you wish to remain on the 4.x branch). It is possible that this is a performance issue within your version of PHP which has since been fixed.

Zoom's PHP script does not do anything that should retain or affect the performance of your server after a search has finished executing. In addition to this, your index files are relatively small, so it would seem unlikely to be the cause.

It is also possible that other processes running on your server is chewing up more resources than you expected. You should check your process/usage list (eg. "top") to confirm what is using up resources.

[David]

I don't think you can be using the CGI on SunOS, so it must be PHP.

PHP should release all RAM after a PHP script has been run. I had a look at the PHP change log between V4.0.6 (from June 2001) until today, V4.4.4.

During the last 5 years dozens of memory leaks have been corrected in PHP, so I think it is highly likely that your old PHP version is in fact the problem.

-----
David

[jans]

Thanks you both for your replies. We are in the process of setting up new servers with PHP 5, and I am looking forward to the increased speed and reliability and the rollout of Zoom search.

-J