Installing MemCached

Memcached is a high performance in-memory caching system that can be used to speed up applications and websites that use databases. Memcached does not write to disk, instead store its content in system memory which makes it faster.

Majority of the content management systems in used today have tools to take advantage of Memcached. If configured correctly, you may be able to see huge improvements to your websites and applications.

This brief tutorial shows you how to install Memcached on Ubuntu 17.04 / 17.10 servers

To install Memcached, follow the steps below:

Step 1: Install Memcached

To install Memcached on Ubuntu, run the commands below

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install memcached

After running the above commands, the system should update and install Memcached packages. Other required packages may be installed during the installation.

Step 2: Configure Memcached

After installing Memcached, the commands below can be used to view help information about Memcached.

memcache -h

Memcached default configuration file is located at:

/etc/memcached.conf

Run the commands below to edit the file

sudo nano /etc/memcached.conf

In there, you should see these default settings below:

# memcached default config file
# 2003 - Jay Bonci <jaybonci@debian.org>
# This configuration file is read by the start-memcached script provided as
# part of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution.

# Run memcached as a daemon. This command is implied, and is not needed for the
# daemon to run. See the README.Debian that comes with this package for more
# information.
-d

# Log memcached's output to /var/log/memcached
logfile /var/log/memcached.log

# Be verbose
# -v

# Be even more verbose (print client commands as well)
# -vv

# Start with a cap of 64 megs of memory. It's reasonable, and the daemon default
# Note that the daemon will grow to this size, but does not start out holding this much
# memory
-m 64

# Default connection port is 11211
-p 11211

# Run the daemon as root. The start-memcached will default to running as root if no
# -u command is present in this config file
-u memcache

# Specify which IP address to listen on. The default is to listen on all IP addresses
# This parameter is one of the only security measures that memcached has, so make sure
# it's listening on a firewalled interface.
-l 127.0.0.1

# Limit the number of simultaneous incoming connections. The daemon default is 1024
# -c 1024

# Lock down all paged memory. Consult with the README and homepage before you do this
# -k

# Return error when memory is exhausted (rather than removing items)
# -M

# Maximize core file limit
# -r

Save the file after editing. You may want to increase the memory size Memcached uses to store objects..

The commands below can be used to start, start and restart Memcached.

sudo service memcached stop
sudo service memcached start
sudo service memcached restart

Congratulations! Youâ€™ve just installed Memcached