Yesterday, on November 23, 2024, the PHP community welcomed the release of PHP 8.3, marking another milestone in the evolution of this widely used scripting language. With PHP powering 76.7% of all websites with known server-side programming languages, upgrading PHP is critical in ensuring the security, efficiency, and overall user experience of a significant portion […]
PHP 8 Compatibility Check and Performance Tips
PHP 7 was first released back on 03 Dec 2015. It’s been around a while! The PHP team encouraged upgrading to PHP 7, hailing its improvements such as being twice as fast, consistent 64-bit support, removing old and unsupported SAPIs and extensions, and improved fatal error resistance, to name a few. A few years ago, […]
bottom (btm) – A Comprehensive System Resource Monitor
Today, I learned about bottom – yet another command line process/system monitoring tool. I’m probably late to this one, however, I want to quickly share this tool with readers. Have you ever found yourself needing a detailed and real-time overview of system resource usage on your server or computer? Specifically for Linux, there are various […]
Free vs. Available Memory in Linux
At times, we will need to know precisely how our Linux systems use memory. This article will examine how to use the free command-line utility to view memory usage on a Linux system. In doing so, we will clearly define the difference between free vs. available memory on Linux systems. Free vs. Available memory […]
What is iowait and how does it affect Linux performance?
iowait (wait, wa, %iowait, wait%, or I/O wait) is often displayed by command-line Linux system monitoring tools such as top, sar, atop, and others. On its own, it’s one of many performance stats that provide us insight into Linux system performance. I/O wait came up in a recent discussion with a new client. During our support […]
Linux server needs a RAM upgrade? Check with top, free, vmstat, sar
Sometimes, it can be a bit of a challenge knowing if and when you should upgrade the RAM (random access memory) on your Linux server. Even more so, when deciding how much memory you should add, or if you have adequate memory, how do you make the best use of it? This article will walk […]
Are you measuring Linux web server memory usage correctly?
This article was first published in 2014. After which, there was a welcomed change to the Linux kernel in 2016, as mentioned in the 2017 article: Does your Linux server need a RAM upgrade? Let’s check with free, top, vmstat and sar. As a server administrator or web developer, it’s your responsibility to stay informed about […]
Linux Performance: Almost Always Add Swap Space – Part 2: ZRAM
In the previous article, we looked at how swap space, particularly swapping, can severely slow down Linux performance. We then tweaked Linux kernel parameters to better use server memory and avoid heavy swapping. That article created some debate and good arguments for and against swap space. For example, if you have more than enough memory […]
Linux Performance: Almost Always Add Swap Space
We know that using Linux swap space instead of RAM (memory) can severely slow down performance. So, one might ask, since I have more than enough memory available, wouldn’t it be better to delete swap space? The answer is: No. There are performance benefits when swap space is enabled, even when you have more than […]
Raspberry Pi Performance: Add ZRAM and these Kernel Parameters
Previously, I published a Pinebook Pro review article on this blog. Similar to the Pinebook Pro, the Raspberry Pi and, more recently, the Raspberry Pi 4 are also ARM-based. With good results, I’ve applied some of the optimizations mentioned in that previous article to the Raspberry Pi 4. I wanted to share these tweaks and […]