Boost PHP Site Performance with tmpfs and Anything‑Sync‑Daemon on Ubuntu

After migrating the blog to Tencent Cloud and configuring SSL, the author optimizes PHP performance using tmpfs as a RAM disk.

Backup the nginx root directory before starting.

Check Ubuntu version:

<code>$ cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS \n \l</code>

Create a mount point and mount tmpfs (e.g., 256M):

<code>mount -t tmpfs -o size=256M tmpfs /ramdisk</code>

Verify with df:

<code>$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
...
tmpfs 256M 0 256M 0% /ramdisk</code>

Install Anything‑Sync‑Daemon (asd) to synchronize the website directory to the RAM disk.

<code>wget https://github.com/graysky2/anything-sync-daemon/archive/master.zip
make install-systemd-all</code>

Note: on this system the service files were copied to /lib/systemd/system manually.

<code>mv asd-resync.service asd-resync.timer asd.service /lib/systemd/system
systemctl daemon-reload</code>

Configure

asd.conf

to sync the nginx root:

<code>WHATTOSYNC=('/home/huixinchen/www/htdocs/')   # directory to sync
VOLATILE="/ramdisk"                         # tmpfs target</code>

Optionally add multiple directories separated by commas.

Set up a daily systemd timer:

<code>[Unit]
Description=Timer for Anything-sync-daemon - 1Hour
PartOf=asd-resync.service asd.service

[Timer]
OnUnitActiveSec=24h</code>

Check the daemon status:

<code>$ asd p
Anything-sync-daemon v5.85 on Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS
Daemon pid file is not present.
Resync cronjob is not present.
Overlayfs technology is currently inactive.
...
tmpfs target: /ramdisk/asd-huixinchen/home/huixinchen/www/htdocs
dir size: 237M</code>

Start the service:

<code>service asd start</code>

The nginx root now points to the RAM disk via a symlink, so no nginx configuration changes are needed; just restart PHP‑FPM and clear opcache.

<code>$ ll
total 0K
lrwxrwxrwx 1 huixinchen huixinchen 50 Feb 15 22:27 htdocs -> /ramdisk/asd-huixinchen/home/huixinchen/www/htdocs/</code>

After restarting FPM, the site works out of the box, and changes are periodically written back to the persistent backup directory.

For more details see the Anything‑Sync‑Daemon wiki.