Install Memcached (Memcache) on CentOS 5.5, Fedora 13, Red Hat (RHEL) 5.5

By
JR
 – Published: February 4, 2010 – Last Updated: July 8, 2010Posted in: CentOS, Fedora, Linux, Red Hat (RHEL), Servers

Memcached is a high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but originally intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load. Memcached is a very useful also in other cases, than only dynamic web applications.

This guide explains howto install Memcached 1.4.5 current stable version of distributed memory object caching system on CentOS 5.5, Fedora 12 and Red Hat RHEL 5.5. Fedora 12, Fedora 13 and Red Hat (RHEL) 6 has Memcached 1.4.5 as default so extra repositories is not needed on Fedora 12 or Fedora 13.

Install Memcached 1.4.5 Distributed Memory Object Caching System

Install Remi repository (not needed on Fedora 12 or Fedora 13):

rpm -Uvh http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-5.rpm

Install Memcached package:

yum --enablerepo=remi install memcached
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
[...]
Setting up Install Process
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package memcached.i386 0:1.4.5-2.el5.remi set to be updated
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
 
Dependencies Resolved
 
=================================================================================================================================================================================
 Package                                    Arch                                  Version                                            Repository                             Size
=================================================================================================================================================================================
Installing:
 memcached                                  i386                                  1.4.5-2.el5.remi                                   remi                                   71 k
 
Transaction Summary
=================================================================================================================================================================================
Install      1 Package(s)         
Update       0 Package(s)         
Remove       0 Package(s)         
 
Total download size: 71 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
memcached-1.4.5-2.el5.remi.i386.rpm                                                                                                                       |  71 kB     00:00     
Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test
Finished Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
  Installing     : memcached                                                                                                                                                 1/1 
 
Installed:
  memcached.i386 0:1.4.5-2.el5.remi                                                                                                                                              
 
Complete!

Configure memcached

Most important value to configure is CACHESIZE, which is cache size on Megabytes. Example Following configuration use 512 Mb memory for Memcached

nano -w /etc/sysconfig/memcached
PORT="11211"
USER="memcached"
MAXCONN="1024"
CACHESIZE="512"
OPTIONS=""

Start Memcached

# Set Memcached to start automatically on boot
chkconfig memcached on
# Start Memcached
/etc/init.d/memcached start
## OR ##
service memcached start

Check that Memcached is Running and Working

echo stats | nc localhost 11211
STAT pid 7599
STAT uptime 10
STAT time 1265288542
STAT version 1.4.4
STAT pointer_size 32
STAT rusage_user 0.003999
STAT rusage_system 0.052991
STAT curr_connections 10
STAT total_connections 11
STAT connection_structures 11
STAT cmd_get 0
STAT cmd_set 0
STAT cmd_flush 0
STAT get_hits 0
STAT get_misses 0
STAT delete_misses 0
STAT delete_hits 0
STAT incr_misses 0
STAT incr_hits 0
STAT decr_misses 0
STAT decr_hits 0
STAT cas_misses 0
STAT cas_hits 0
STAT cas_badval 0
STAT auth_cmds 0
STAT auth_errors 0
STAT bytes_read 6
STAT bytes_written 0
STAT limit_maxbytes 536870912
STAT accepting_conns 1
STAT listen_disabled_num 0
STAT threads 4
STAT conn_yields 0
STAT bytes 0
STAT curr_items 0
STAT total_items 0
STAT evictions 0
END
 
# Try to get some value
echo get some_value | nc localhost 11211
END
 
# Not found, but check the stats again
echo stats | nc localhost 11211
STAT pid 7599
STAT uptime 10
STAT time 1265288542
STAT version 1.4.4
[...]
STAT cmd_get 1
STAT cmd_set 0
STAT cmd_flush 0
STAT get_hits 0
STAT get_misses 1
STAT delete_misses 0
[...]
STAT evictions 0
END

Everything working nice. Then it’s time to test memcache example with some web application.

Open Memcached Port (11211) on Iptables Firewall (If the Memcached will also be used other local servers)

Edit /etc/sysconfig/iptables file:

nano -w /etc/sysconfig/iptables

Add following line before COMMIT:

-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 11211 -j ACCEPT

Restart Iptables Firewall:

service iptables restart
## OR ##
/etc/init.d/iptables restart

Test remote connection:

echo stats | nc memcache_host_name_or_ip 11211

Install Memcache PHP Module on Fedora 12 and Fedora 13

Install following package

yum install php php-pecl-memcache

Restart Web server

/etc/init.d/httpd restart
## OR ##
service httpd restart

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About the Author

Hi, I'm JR and the Founder of if not true then false. I am a software developer, and I have over ten years experience in programming. I'm big fan of Linux and Open Source. And normally I use just Linux environments. - You can follow me on Twitter at @zuissi