PHP Community · Help: PHP fails to start intermittently in containers, logs inside

This is not a PHP problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

This is not a PHP problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

I just read the PHP source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

One counter-example: below PHP 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

This is not a PHP problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

I just read the PHP source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

One counter-example: below PHP 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.