XF 1.3 Question on Cache & Rebuild without cache enabled

[Bob Hennessey]

We are in the process of migrating some forums from VB to XF. Currently APC cache is configured at the server level, but as far as Xenforo is concerned the config.php has no cache enabled.

I've noticed even with no cache defined I still need to rebuild cache to get the forums & threads to appear on the site.

My question is does Xenforo do some sort of cache on the file server or somewhere if no cache is defined? I'm trying to understand what cache I need to rebuild, especially at go-live time to reduce downtime during the migration. There are hundreds of thousands of users and rebuilding the user cache takes several hours.

We do plan on adding memcache soon but I'd like to understand what gets cached and where if caching is enabled or disabled.

thanks!

 

[Mike]

I'm unclear what cache you're rebuilding to make forums & threads appear. I'd need more information about what exactly is happening (and when) to give more guidance.

Out of the box, XF doesn't really write to anywhere other than the DB and the data/internal_data directories; the closest thing to a cache in those directories are the template caches but they're only written if you enable an option.

 

[Bob Hennessey]

I'm just using the rebuild cache tools from the Tools menu in the admin, and using Big Board Importer. All of this is currently on an DEV environment to test things out. Last time I ran the import the site showed no nodes/forums or anything until I rebuilt the cache (I think it was the thread cache I rebuilt to get it to appear, but I'll confirm exactly which one as I test in our QA environment).

 

[Mike]

That would likely imply that the permission cache hadn't been built yet, which would be expected when importing. So that's not APC related, it's just data that isn't built until after the import.

 

[Bob Hennessey]

Ok makes sense, thanks! Big Board also says to rebuild the user cache, would anything be built by doing that? This is an large forum that if I can avoid that step I'd like to as it took a very long time in our ENG environment and I'd hate to keep live users off that long when we migrate the production site.

 

[Mike]

It can't be avoided. It rebuilds a lot of types of data which isn't created during the import (but would be created during normal usage).