ob_gzhandler SUPER slow!!

[stimpy77]

Using a shared web host (HostGator).

I'm trying to add gzip compression to a web site where I'm already doing pass-through file writing via php using URL redirection. I added ..

ob_start("ob_gzhandler");

.. to the top of of my URL handler PHP file, and also for a time I had ob_flush(); at the bottom. (Couldn't add ob_gzhandler to my .htaccess file as that resulted in Apache's failure to recognize "php_value".)

This worked in the sense that the files properly get gzipped. Unfortunately, it also caused the PHP file to slow down, where previously it took a split second, now it took something more like five seconds, just so spit out what came from a one-line .txt file.

Obviously I had to disable that quick!

What's wrong? What happened?

[NogDog]

Instead of using the ob_gzhandler, I use the zlib.output_compression setting in my .htaccess file, and it seems to work pretty well (but I've not done any really scientific comparison).

php_value zlib.output_compression 1

[stimpy77]

I would try that, but as I said, .htaccess for some reason said that it couldn't understand the keyword "php_value" when I tried it for ob_gzhandler. I can try it with the other value but the error message was about the keyword "php_value", not "ob_gzhandler". 🙁

Update: Yeah still a problem: "Invalid command 'php_value', perhaps mis-spelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration"