[squid-users] squid doesn't cache objects in memory when using SMP and shared memory cache

[Alex Rousskov]

On 01/14/2018 10:53 PM, Ivan Larionov wrote:

> After migrating squid from non-SMP/aufs to SMP/rock memory cache hit
> ratio dropped significantly. Like from 50-100% to 1-5%. 

This could be a side effect of not supporting Vary caching in shared
memory: https://bugs.squid-cache.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3806#c9


> And disk cache hit ratio went up from 15-50% to stable 60-65%. 

I hope your total/combined hit ratio improved overall.


> it looks like in SMP/rock mode squid avoids using memory for small
> files like 1-3KB but uses it for 10KB+ files.

No, there is no such size-discrimination code in Squid.


> I started tracking down the issue with disabling disk cache completely
> and it didn't change anything, I just started to get MISS every time for
> the URL which was getting MEM_HIT with an old configuration. Then I
> changed "workers 2" to "workers 1" and started getting memory hits as
> before.

For a clean apples-to-apples test, make sure you use
"memory_cache_shared on" when using a single worker without rock cache_dirs.


> Am I doing anything wrong? Which debug options should I enable to
> provide more information if it seems like a bug?


Vary caching should be fixed as well, of course, but perhaps there is
another problem we do not know about. I would start by eliminating Vary
as the known problem. When using a test transaction, make sure the
response does not have a Vary header. Or configure Squid to log the Vary
header and remove the corresponding transactions when computing
adjusted-for-Vary memory cache hit ratio.


HTH,

Alex.