For this test, I’ve set up a server (1 intel processor/512MB ram/12MB video memory) with Ubuntu Server 10.10 (32 bit).
I could test some static resources but nowadays, particularly all websites are dynamic ones so I’ve installed Mysql/PHP and of course Apache2, all with the default settings, on my server.
Next, I’ve downloaded WordPress and installed it on the server, changed the appearance to ‘pixel theme’ and added a few posts with images in.

Time to test

I’m not going to do fancy stuff, the module is installed with the default options enabled and I’ll just use Firebug to do the tests.

First the tests without the module installed:

The results with the module installed:

Mod_pagespeed_statistics:

Conclusion:

• The amount of requests have been reduced in this case with 2 (-15%)
• The pagesize has been reduced with 5.2KB (-1.5%)
• The loadtime is shorter when mod_pagespeed is enabled (-13%)

The 50% profit claim is a little bit optimistic because the bottleneck in the pageload is the dynamic content and that’s a part where this module doesn’t do anything. But in general, the module does a reasonably good job. I get a 13% profit with mostly default values, a good configured server should propably even do better.
I will definitely test this further and maybe put it one day on a production server.

The config used in this test looks like this:

<IfModule pagespeed_module>
    SetOutputFilter MOD_PAGESPEED_OUTPUT_FILTER
     ModPagespeed on
     ModPagespeedUrlPrefix "http://localhost/"
     ModPagespeedFileCachePath "/var/mod_pagespeed/cache/"
     ModPagespeedGeneratedFilePrefix "/var/mod_pagespeed/files/"
     ModPagespeedRewriteLevel CoreFilters
     ModPagespeedDomain localhost
     ModPagespeedEnableFilters add_instrumentation
<IfModule>

My full configuration file can be downloaded here.

I wasn’t very happy with these 3 directories because I wanted to categorize my media in other directories. In this post, I will post how I’ve resolved this problem.

First, enable SSH access to the NAS and log in.

My first idea to tackle this issue was to use of symbolic links

ln -s /volume1/MyMusicDirectory /volume1/music

I’ve re-indexed my files on the NAS and everything worked instantly. All the files in MyMusicDirectory where indexed so I was very happy…but not for long.
I noticed quickly that the new files I’ve placed in MyMusicDirectory weren’t auto-indexed by the NAS. I always had to re-index through the webinterface which can take hours when there is a lot of data to index so that was a big issue.
I figured out what the problem was: symbolic links will be considered as files and not as directories so the autoindexer wouldn’t follow the symbolic link.

Up to idea 2: mount –bind
I used mount –bind to create an unbreakable link which normally would be used as a directory by the NAS so the contents could be auto-indexed.

mount --bind /volume1/MyMusicDirectory /volume1/music

It worked!! YES!!
Till I’ve rebooted the NAS. The mount was gone and I had to manually add it again. Not something I want to do at every reboot.

Up to idea 3: changing fstab
The file /etc/fstab will be loaded at startup to mount the filesystem so I’ve added the following rule in the file:

/volume1/MyMusicDirectory /volume1/music bind defaults,bind 0 0

I saved the file and rebooted and it didn’t worked. The fstab file will be overridden at startup with Synology’s default fstab-file so the rule I’ve entered before was deleted.

And then idea 3: The solution
Create a file rc.local

touch /etc/rc.local

open the file and add the following line:

mount --bind /volume1/MyMusicDirectory /volume1/music

Now restart the NAS and you’re done.
The files in MyMusicDirectory will be auto-indexed by the media server.