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PHP 5.2.1 was a evil release - check your server

Posted on 26/9/07 by Felix Geisendörfer

Hey folks,

I think this could be interesting for a lot of you running PHP 5.2.1 in a production environment. While I was at php|works I heard a lot of people say how bad of a release 5.2.1 was and that I should stay away from it. Well I didn't take it to seriously at this point, but when I checked what version of PHP we are running on my client project recently it turns out it was 5.2.1.

At this point we still had significant performance issues with our application (300db tables are fun!) so I suggested Dennis (the project manager) to see if we can upgrade to the latest PHP release. I just talked with him again and was amazed. The upgrade from PHP 5.2.1 to 5.2.4 seems to have given us a 40-60% performance boost in terms of our CPU usage having dropped from being constantly at 100% down to around those values.

So if you have an application in production which struggles with performance issues, check if its running 5.2.1 - you may have a very cheap optimization option available ; ).

HTH,
-- Felix Geisendörfer aka the_undefined

PS: While there have been several bug fixes and improvements in between 5.2.1 and 5.2.4, this bug seems to have caused the biggest issues.

 

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speedmax  said on Sep 26, 2007:

nice tip felix,

That is a good one, just because web request is short lived. doesn't mean PHP should settle on its resource management.

Memory leaks something that many php dev is unheard of, but more and more obvious as application become more complex.

hopefully later PHP release can equip with a more robust garbage collector, smarter memory management.

Mariano Iglesias said on Sep 27, 2007:

I did notice this need for 5.2.4 over 5.2.1 on another production server I use for another project. It never crossed to my attention that the same project we work on could be running on 5.2.1, or I would've FORCED Dennis to do the update.

Thank God you are less of a dush than I am :)

Felix Geisendörfer said on Sep 27, 2007:

Mariano: I only noticed b/c I added those headers to show you the cache-status of preview images, so the PHP version crossed my eyes ; ).

PHPDeveloper.org said on Sep 27, 2007:

Felix Geisendorfer's Blog: PHP 5.2.1 was a evil release - check your server...

...

[...] Felix Geisendorfer has a reminder from developers out there - “PHP 5.2.1 was an evil release”: While I was at php|works I heard a lot of people say how bad of a release 5.2.1 was and that I should stay away from it. Well I didn’t take it to seriously at this point, but when I checked what version of PHP we are running on my client project recently it turns out it was 5.2.1. [...]

Torrential Web Dev said on Sep 29, 2007:

Benchmarks, Site Speed and User Experience...

Following on the back of my recent posts looking at the (hopefully) best and worst of benchmarks I thought it would be useful to finish off with some genuine tips for creating 'lightning fast' websites. I probably lack the experience and insight to ...

coolpositive said on Oct 22, 2007:

I think this could be interesting for a lot of you running PHP 5.2.1 in a production environment. While I was at php|works I heard a lot of people say how bad of a release 5.2.1 was and that I should stay away from it. Well I didn’t take it to seriously at this point, but when I checked what version of PHP we are running on my client project recently it turns out it was 5.2.1.

At this point we still had significant performance issues with our application (300db tables are fun!) so I suggested Dennis (the project manager) to see if we can upgrade to the latest PHP release. I just talked with him again and was amazed. The upgrade from PHP 5.2.1 to 5.2.4 seems to have given us a 40-60% performance boost in terms of our CPU usage having dropped from being constantly at 100% down to around those values.

coolpositive said on Oct 22, 2007:

That is a good one, just because web request is short lived. doesn’t mean PHP should settle on its resource management.

Memory leaks something that many php dev is unheard of, but more and more obvious as application become more complex.

hopefully later PHP release can equip with a more robust garbage collector, smarter memory management.

said on Apr 04, 2008:

AAR Group:

Femida said on Apr 07, 2008:

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