After seeing
Improving snac Performance with Nginx Proxy Cache from @itnotes@snac.it-notes.dragas.net via
https://snac.it-notes.dragas.net/itnotes/p/1738139676.258050
https://it-notes.dragas.net/2025/01/29/improving-snac-performance-with-nginx-proxy-cache/
I decided to prematurely optimize and adjust this for my apache2 httpd server in debian where I run snac.

I've never done any caching etc before so it was a nice adventure to learn something new. The documentation helped and in the end it wasn't very hard. I learned a bit about some http headers and regex on the way too.

Basically it works like this:
Enable the relevant modules:

´a2enmod expires cache cache_disk´

Be sure "htcacheclean" is running to clean up old disk cache. (under debian see /etc/default/apache-htcacheclean or else the relevant systemd service)
Then add to the snac virtualhost config:

    CacheRoot /var/cache/apache2/mod_cache_disk
    CacheQuickHandler off
    CacheLock on
    #Optional while testing stuff;
    CacheDetailHeader on
    
    #My Instance ist not at the root, but under "/social"; so this needs to be adapted:
    <LocationMatch "^/social/[^/]+/s">
    CacheEnable disk
    ExpiresActive On
    ExpiresDefault "access plus 30 days"
    </LocationMatch>

This will use the disk cache to cache everything under the /s/ Path, same as the original ngnix tutorial, Utilizing the mod_expires to generate the appropriate cache headers (for lazy ones like me), In this case caching it for 30 days.
Further reading and all options explained under https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/caching.html ff

Thanks for the initial tutorial @itnotes@snac.it-notes.dragas.net

Edit:
Oh and don't hesitate to tell me what I did stupid while setting this up, maybe in nicer words, if it is. And also I can't get the markdown Code formatting working apparently. well. Sorry for all the edits.

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