Memcache buffer overflow?

Server NGINX
1

Dear all,

I am trying to get memcache with nginx to work to improve the
performance of my php web application. However, while my configuration
is working fine for small outputs, if output size exceeds 20k I only get
garbage characters posted back to the client. The test was carried out
on debian lenny, with nginx version nginx/0.6.32

Test Code:

— snip

<?php $length = 20; $memcache = new Memcache; $memcache->connect('localhost', '11211'); $x=''; for($i=0;$i<$length*1024;$i++) { $x .= 'x'; } $memcache->set('/k',$x, 0, 6100); echo strlen($memcache->get('/k')); --- snap If I run this code with length set to 20, the string is correctly stored in memcache (as verified by reading from the memcache). However, nginx returns garbage characters only - especially NULL strings. If length is reduced to 19, both the memcache module and the script correctly output the x's. I would be very grateful if this bug could be fixed. Please do not hesistate to contact me if you need more information. Kind regards, batrick Posted at Nginx Forum: http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,2160,2160#msg-2160
2

batrick wrote:

$x=‘’;
for($i=0;$i<$length*1024;$i++) {
$x .= ‘x’;
}
$memcache->set(‘/k’,$x, 0, 6100);
echo strlen($memcache->get(‘/k’));
— snap

If I run this code with length set to 20, the string is correctly stored in memcache (as verified by reading from the memcache). However, nginx returns garbage characters only - especially NULL strings.

If length is reduced to 19, both the memcache module and the script correctly output the x’s.

don’t forget to disable gzip compression of values stored in memcached
by php:
http://php.net/manual/en/function.memcache-setcompressthreshold.php

3

Hi Anton,

many thanks for this. The problem is indeed that the PHP memcache client
by default enables compression for large objects. When retrieving the
memcache object from PHP everything appears fine, but nginx does not
handle the compression. The feature can be disabled by setting the
“minimum required saving” before compression to 100%:

$memcache->setCompressThreshold(0, 1);

I hope this will be helpful to anyone else with this problem and once
again thanks to Anton for his prompt help!

Kind regards,

Batrick

Posted at Nginx Forum: