Web Cache Web Server Configuration - cPanel/WHM Multi-Site/Shared Hosting

This guide assumes that you have command-line access to the WHM Server. If you do not have command-line access, please refer to cPanel's documentation on editing Apache configuration files through the WHM GUI.

You may set up the Cache Root and Policies in one of three ways:

• WHM Plugin (Preferred)
• Command-Line Script
• Manually from the Command Line

The preferred way to set up the needed cache roots is through the WHM plugin. Detailed steps on how to do this can be found here.

You may use the command line instead of the WHM plugin. Simply run the following script, which will set server level and virtual host level cache roots and cache policies:

bash <(curl https://www.litespeedtech.com/packages/lscache/set_cache_root_policy.sh)

Note that this script does not enable cache lookup for users. You can either use the LiteSpeed WordPress Cache Management tools in the LiteSpeed WHM Plugin to manage this in bulk, or add the CacheLookup directive to .htaccess files for individual users manually. This can be done by either the server administrator or the user by adding the following lines:

<IfModule LiteSpeed>
  CacheLookup public on
</IfModule>

For the LiteSpeed Cache for WordPress plugin, both public and private cache are supported. To enable these, you can use:

<IfModule LiteSpeed>
  CacheLookup on
</IfModule>

or

<IfModule LiteSpeed>
  CacheLookup public on
  CacheLookup private on
</IfModule>

The steps that follow will guide you through manually setting cache root and cache policy settings.

Add the following lines to the /usr/local/apache/conf/includes/pre_main_global.conf file for EA3 or the /etc/apache2/conf.d/includes/pre_main_global.conf file for EA4

<IfModule Litespeed>
CacheRoot /home/lscache/
</IfModule>

Note: It is recommended that you set the server level cache root to /home/lscache/ or a disk partition with enough space.

Create a lscache_vhosts.conf file in the /usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/ directory for EA3 and the /etc/apache2/conf.d/userdata/ directory for EA4. If these directories do not exist, create them. Your lscache_vhosts.conf file should contain the following lines:

<IfModule Litespeed>
  CacheRoot lscache
</IfModule>

This is done to set each virtual host's cache directory to its home directory (/home/<user>/lscache).

Apply these changes to all virtual hosts by running the following command:

/scripts/ensure_vhost_includes --all-users

Note: You only need to run this command once and it will activate for all users, including new users created by WHM later. There is no need to edit the cPanel skeleton file.

Example: Apache 2.2 installations with an HTTP site

Create a file named lscache_vhost.conf in the /usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/std/2_2/<user>/<domain>/ directory for EA3 or /etc/apache2/conf.d/userdata/a/std/2_2/<user>/<domain>/ directory for EA4. If this directory does not exist, create it. Add the following lines to the file:

<IfModule Litespeed>
CacheRoot lscache
</IfModule>

This will set the cache directory for this virtual host to /home/<user>/lscache.

Apply these changes to this virtual host by running the ensure_vhost_includes script with the following flag:

/scripts/ensure_vhost_includes --user=$user

For HTTPS sites or Apache 2.4 installations, please refer to cPanel's documentation on modifying virtual host containers with include files.

Note: If different vhosts share the same document root, these vhosts have to share the same vhost-level cache root directory.

The default LiteSpeed Cache settings work well with most caching scenarios. If you're configuring a shared hosting environment, don't change any of the Server Level default cache policy settings. Leave them as Not Set as below:

Cache Policy:
Enable Public Cache: Not Set
Check Public Cache: Not Set
Max Object Size: Not Set
Cache Expire Time (seconds): Not Set
Cache Stale Age (seconds): Not Set
Cache Request with Query String: Not Set
Cache Request with Cookie: Not Set
Cache Response with Cookie: Not Set
Ignore Request Cache-Control: Not Set
Ignore Response Cache-Control: Not Set
Enable Private Cache: Not Set
Check Private Cache: Not Set
Private Cache Expire Time (seconds): Not Set

Add the following Apache-style configuration directive in your application level document root .htaccess file to enable cache lookup.

<IfModule LiteSpeed>
  CacheLookup public on
</IfModule>

After applying your cache storage settings, perform a graceful restart of LiteSpeed Web Server to have these changes take effect. LiteSpeed Web Server will automatically create cache root directories with proper permissions. Users don't need to manually create any cache root directories themselves.

service lsws restart

For Advanced Cache Configuration info, look here.

In some environments, you might run with normal hard drives for /home, but you want to place your lscache data on SSDs, such as /ssdcache/lscache. This requires a bit of special configuration both within your CacheRoot setting as well as CageFS.

Make sure that your secondary disk is mounted on /ssdcache and that the directory lscache exists.

Within /etc/apache2/conf.d/userdata/lscache_vhosts.conf, you'll have to add the following content:

<IfModule Litespeed>
CacheRoot /ssdcache/lscache/$vh_user
</IfModule>

The above 3 lines will tell LiteSpeed that the vhost-level cache corresponds to a dynamic LSCache folder which matches the user of the VirtualHost. This will ensure that the cache for each customer gets separated.

If you're using CageFS, you also need to expose this within the caged environment. Luckily, it's rather easy to do!

In your /etc/cagefs/cagefs.mp file, you can add the line:

%/ssdcache/lscache

By using % in front of the path, it utilizes the “split by username” functionality added in CageFS 5.3.1, so what will be exposed within CageFS will be /ssdcache/lscache/$user.

To apply the above changes, we first rebuild the httpd configuration in cPanel and restart LiteSpeed:

/scripts/rebuildhttpdconf
/scripts/restartsrv_httpd

Afterwards, we have to remount CageFS for all users, so the new path becomes available within CageFS:

cagefsctl --remount-all

Your LSCache data will now be stored on the SSD instead of your hard drive!