PHP pages updates slow to reflect in browser

[PatRoy]

Hello folks,

I'm running PHP Version 7.1.4, on Lighttpd 1.4.32 on my old NAS device (so can't really do PHP /Lighttpd updates).

I'm developing this project that uses sessions, but have a really annoying problem where every time I do a change in a PHP file, reloading the page in my browser won't show the change right away, as if it was cached somehow, showing still older version... I have to keep hitting reload in my browser for, let's say ~40 seconds or so, and at some point, it will show my changes. 

This drives me nuts when trying to troubleshoot a problem!

The thing is, it happens only with PHP files. Changes in regular HTML files are reflected right away.

I've tried the followings in order to pin-out the problem:

1. cleared my browser's cache completely
    
2. added the following cache-control directives inside my Lighty server config file: 

   setenv.add-response-header += ("Cache-Control" => "no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate, max-age=0, post-check=0, pre-check=0")

    

3.  set nocache session limiter in php.ini:

   session.cache_limiter = nocache

4. manually changed the HTTP Headers right from the PHP file:

   header("Expires: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 06:00:00 GMT", true);
   header("Last-Modified: " . gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s") . " GMT", true);
   header("Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0, post-check=0, pre-check=0", true);
   header("Pragma: no-cache", true);
   header("Connection: close", true);

    

Problem always remains the same. And yes, I did confirm with a HTTP Headers Chrome plugin that the headers were indeed modified on every try that I did above... As of try#4, my headers in my PHP files look like:

Content-Language    en
P3P                 CP='CURa ADMa DEVa PSAo PSDo OUR BUS UNI PUR INT DEM STA PRE COM NAV OTC NOI DSP COR'
Cache-Control       no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, proxy-revalidate, max-age=0, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Cache-Control       no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0, post-check=0, pre-check=0
X-Powered-By        PHP/7.1.4
Expires             Tue, 03 Jul 2001 06:00:00 GMT
Last-Modified       Sat, 22 Feb 2020 20:18:01 GMT
Pragma              no-cache
Connection          close
Content-Encoding    gzip
Vary                Accept-Encoding
Content-type        text/html; charset=UTF-8
Transfer-Encoding   chunked
Date                Sat, 22 Feb 2020 20:18:01 GMT
Server              lighttpd/1.4.32

Running out of ideas here... Any help would be great!

Cheers,
Pat

[requinix]

Can you post/link to your phpinfo()?

[kicken]

Open your browsers development console (F12) and disable the use of cache (Network tab -> [X] Disable Cache) and see if that resolves the problem.  If it does, you know it's a browser cache issue.  If it doesn't, you know the problem lies elsewhere.

Have you experienced the issue in multiple browsers, or have you only been using one?

[PatRoy]

Here's my phpinfo() : http://corbeauperdu.ddns.net/phpinfo.php

I tried disabling cache from my browser's dev tools , as you said kicken, but problem remains

 

Additional info, if it applies, I'm running php-cgi and not php-fpm on server because the fpm one seems to work slower for me.... (it's a very old NAS) ...

fastcgi.server = ( ".php" => ("localhost" => 
                        ("bin-path" => "/ffp/bin/php-cgi", 
                        "socket" => "/tmp/php-cgi.socket", 
                        "bin-environment" => ( "PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN" => "0" ), "max-procs" => "1") ) 
                 )

# also had these instruction in my lighty config... don't (yet) what it's for...
server.max-request-size = 65536
server.network-backend="writev"
server.use-noatime = "enable"

 

Edited February 23, 2020 by PatRoy

[requinix]

According to the opcache.revalidate_freq setting, your server is only looking for changes to PHP scripts once every minute. I think that is a reasonable amount of time.

Can you do your development and testing locally instead? That really is a good practice to learn, and you should be doing it regardless of this caching thing.

[PatRoy]

1 hour ago, requinix said:

According to the opcache.revalidate_freq setting, your server is only looking for changes to PHP scripts once every minute. I think that is a reasonable amount of time.

Can you do your development and testing locally instead? That really is a good practice to learn, and you should be doing it regardless of this caching thing.

 

I just tried changing this setting to '0' and it fixed the issue.... I can't really develop locally, so I'll set this to 0 seconds while I'm developping my project, and change it back to 60 afterwards.

Thanks for your help :))