It’s amazing what you can discover on the forums at 1 o’clock in the morning

Over here, Nevin from EngineHosting wrote:

EE has a limit on the # of cache files it will keep.  Once that limit is reached it flushes ALL of the cache files and starts to regenerate them.  If you have a really busy site, with a lot of templates cached, you can end up with templates that are never being cached for more than a minute or so no matter what you set to keep them for.

That is a VERY helpful nugget of information!

Does anyone know:

1) What the limit is for the number of cache files?

2) If this limit is installation-wide, or site-wide (i.e. if using MSM)?

Thanks! And I recommend reading the rest of Nevin’s post!

- Ad

If it’s not set, 1,000.  And you can’t set it above 1,000 or it defaults back to that.  Once you’ve got more than that in the ‘page_cache’ cache folder, it clears that folder.

Since all sites share a page cache normally, it would be cumulative. 

That help?

Thank you Robin

If it’s not set, 1,000.  And you can’t set it above 1,000 or it defaults back to that

Where is this set? I couldn’t find it in the docs.

In truth, I’m not sure the docs specify the max number.  It is noted in the setting, though- ‘Admin- System Prefs- General Config’:

Maximum Number of Cachable URIs
If you cache your pages or your database, this preference limits the total number of cache instances in order to prevent your cache files from taking up too much disk space. 150 is a good number for a small site. If you have a large site and disk space is not an issue you can set it higher (over 300). We have an internal limit of 1000 regardless of your preference.

You can find the code in core/core.templates.php.

That help?

Ah! And even more lightbulbs!

Thanks Robin. Fine to close this.

Glad Robin was able to answer your question. Please don’t hesitate to post again if needed.