16.2.2 Using memcached

To start using memcached, start the memcached service on one or more servers. Running memcached sets up the server, allocates the memory and starts listening for connections from clients.

Note

You do not need to be a privileged user (root) to run memcached except to listen on one of the privileged TCP/IP ports (below 1024). You must, however, use a user that has not had their memory limits restricted using setrlimit or similar.

To start the server, run memcached as a nonprivileged (that is, non-root) user:

shell> memcached

By default, memcached uses the following settings:

Memory allocation of 64MB
Listens for connections on all network interfaces, using port 11211
Supports a maximum of 1024 simultaneous connections

Typically, you would specify the full combination of options that you want when starting memcached, and normally provide a startup script to handle the initialization of memcached. For example, the following line starts memcached with a maximum of 1024MB RAM for the cache, listening on port 11211 on the IP address 198.51.100.110, running as a background daemon:

shell> memcached -d -m 1024 -p 11211 -l 198.51.100.110

To ensure that memcached is started up on boot, check the init script and configuration parameters.