How to install Memcached Server on Fedora and RHEL/CentOS

To install Memcached Server

This article is about how to install process of Memcached Server on Fedora 17-12 and RHEL/CentOS 6.3/5.8 using YUM command. Memcached is memory object caching program. It is an open source program which helps to speed up the performance.

To Enable EPEL repository under RHEL/CentOS 6.3 or 5.8

For RHEL/CentOS 6 ( 64-Bit )
wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora-epel/6/x86_64/epel-release-6-7.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh epel-release-6-7.noarch.rpm

For RHEL/CentOS 6 ( 32-Bit )
wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora-epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-7.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh epel-release-6-7.noarch.rpm

For RHEL/CentOS 5 ( 64-Bit )
wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora-epel/5/x86_64/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm

For RHEL/CentOS 5 ( 32-Bit )
wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora-epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm

To Install Memcached

The Memcached command can be installed using the YUM tool

[root@linuxhelp~]# yum install memcached
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Determining fastest mirrors
epel: kartolo.sby.datautama.net.id
Dependencies Resolved

=====================================================================================================
 Package            Arch                Version                    Repository                    Size
=====================================================================================================
Installing:            
memcached            i386                1.4.5-1.el5                epel                        71 k

Transaction Summary
=====================================================================================================
Install       1 Package(s)
Upgrade       0 Package(s)

Total download size: 71 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
memcached-1.4.5-1.el5.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 0:1.4.5-1.el5

Complete!

To configure Memcached

This is the basic configuration file for memcached server and we can edit the contents which suits our set up. Here I have configured to my own set up it can be varied.

[root@linuxhelp~]# vi /etc/sysconfig/memcached

To Set or update parameters
# Running on Port 11211
PORT=" 11211" 

# Start as memcached daemon
USER=" memcached" 

# Set max simultaneous connections to 1024
MAXCONN=" 1024" 

# Set Memory size to 2048 - 4GB(4096)
CACHESIZE=" 2048" 

#Set server IP address
OPTIONS=" 192.168.5.220" 

Here, I have changed the default port number 11211 to 11222 and mentioned server’ s IP address as 192.168.5.220

Options

PORT : Runs the memcached
USER : The start-up daemon for memcached service.
MAXCONN : The value used to set max simultaneous connections to 1024.
CACHESIZE : cache size memory can be set to 2048. For busy servers you can increase upto 4GB.

OPTIONS : Apache or Nginx web servers can connect by Setting IP address of the server

To start Memcached

To start and restart the Memcached daemon

[root@linuxhelp~]# chkconfig --levels 235 memcached on
[root@linuxhelp~]# /etc/init.d/memcached start
[root@linuxhelp~]# /etc/init.d/memcached restart

To stop and check status

/etc/init.d/memcached stop
/etc/init.d/memcached status

To Verify Memcached

[root@linuxhelp~]# netstat -tulpn | grep :11222

tcp        0      0 0.0.0:11222             0.0.0.0:*                   LISTEN      10388/memcached
udp        0      0 0.0.0.0:11222             0.0.0.0:*                               10388/memcached

To Check the stats of the server

memcached-tool 192.168.5.220 stats

To install Memcached PHP extension
yum install php-pecl-memcache

To install Memcached Perl Library

yum install perl-Cache-Memcached

To install Memcached Python Library
yum install python-memcached

To configure Firewall to Secure Memcached Server

vi /etc/sysconfig/iptables

To Enable access on IP

## Enable access on IP ranges from 172.16.1.1 to 172.16.1.10 for Port 11211 ##
# iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --destination-port 11211 -m state --state NEW -m iprange --src-range 192.168.1.1-192.168.1.10 -j ACCEPT
# iptables -A INPUT -p udp --destination-port 11211 -m state --state NEW -m iprange --src-range 192.168.1.1-192.168.1.10 -j ACCEPT

Restart the iptables service to save changes

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