APC cached variables larger than user_entries_hint

Question

this is not very relevant as everything is working fine, but I want to know why cached variables are larger than apc.user_entries_hint (100000) I have configured. The info is:

Cached Variables    112609 ( 72.8 MBytes)
Hits      283436
Misses    105726
Request Rate (hits, misses) 18.31 cache requests/second
Hit Rate      13.34 cache requests/second
Miss Rate     4.97 cache requests/second
Insert Rate   12.61 cache requests/second
Cache full count    0

Also, shared memory is "1 Segment(s) with 256.0 MBytes (mmap memory, pthread read/write Locks locking)", and fragmentation at 21% after 6 hours of uptime.

Answer 1

Hint: noun a slight or indirect indication or suggestion (source)

APC will treat all configuration options with hint in name as guidelines it is free to ignore for performance purposes. Only things without it are really set in stone and respected blindly. If your instance ignores this one parameter, it means performance algorithms found it beneficial to ignore it.