Boost Nginx Performance with TCMalloc: Step‑by‑Step Installation Guide

TCMalloc Overview

TCMalloc (Thread‑Caching Malloc) is an open‑source memory allocator from Google’s perftools, offering higher allocation efficiency and speed than the standard glibc malloc, which improves server performance under high concurrency.

To add TCMalloc support to Nginx you need to install the libunwind and gperftools packages. libunwind provides call‑stack support on 64‑bit systems; it is not required on 32‑bit.

Required Packages

libunwind – official site: http://www.nongnu.org/libunwind/; download: http://down.shshenchu.com/libunwind-1.1.tar.gz

gperftools – official site: http://code.google.com/p/gperftools/downloads/list; download: http://down.shshenchu.com/gperftools-2.1.tar.gz

Installation Steps

1. Install libunwind

wget http://down.shshenchu.com/libunwind-1.1.tar.gz
tar -zxvf libunwind-1.1.tar.gz
cd libunwind-1.1
CFLAGS=-fPIC ./configure
make CFLAGS=-fPIC
make CFLAGS=-fPIC install

2. Install gperftools

wget http://down.shshenchu.com/gperftools-2.1.tar.gz
tar -zxvf gperftools-2.1.tar.gz
cd gperftools-2.1
./configure
make && make install
echo "/usr/local/lib" >> /etc/ld.so.conf.d/usr_local_lib.conf
ldconfig

3. Compile Nginx with TCMalloc

When configuring Nginx add the option --with-google_perftools_module.

4. Create a directory for TCMalloc profiling data

mkdir /tmp/tcmalloc
chmod 0777 /tmp/tcmalloc

5. Modify Nginx configuration

Add the following line after the pid directive:

google_perftools_profiles /tmp/tcmalloc;

6. Verify that TCMalloc is loaded

Run:

lsof -n | grep tcmalloc

The output should show Nginx processes with open files under /tmp/tcmalloc, confirming that the profiler is active.

Following these steps completes the TCMalloc optimization of Nginx.