Question: How to install Memcached on Ubuntu?

Answer

Memcached is a free and open-source distributed memory caching system that is often used to speed up dynamic web applications by caching data in memory. Installing Memcached on Ubuntu is a straightforward process.

Step 1: Update the Package List

Firstly, update the package list on your server using the following command:

sudo apt-get update

Step 2: Install Memcached

Install Memcached by running the following command:

sudo apt-get install memcached

During the installation process, you may be prompted to confirm the installation of dependencies required for Memcached.

Step 3: Verify Installation

Once the installation is complete, check if Memcached is running by executing the following command:

systemctl status memcached

If Memcached is running successfully, you should see output similar to the following:

memcached.service - memcached daemon
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/memcached.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Mon 2023-04-25 11:48:05 UTC; 2 days ago
   Main PID: 1234 (memcached)
      Tasks: 3 (limit: 4915)
     Memory: 6.9M
     CGroup: /system.slice/memcached.service
             └─1234 /usr/bin/memcached -m 64 -p 11211 -u memcache -l 127.0.0.1

Step 4: Configure Memcached (Optional)

By default, Memcached listens only on localhost (127.0.0.1) on port 11211. You can customize Memcached's configuration by modifying the /etc/memcached.conf file. For example, to increase the amount of memory allocated to Memcached from the default of 64MB to 256MB, you can modify the -m option as follows:

-m 256

After making changes to the configuration file, you need to restart the Memcached service using the following command:

sudo systemctl restart memcached

That's it! You have now installed Memcached on Ubuntu and verified that it is running successfully.