How to Install Memcached on Ubuntu 20.04

Memcached is an open-source, free and high-performance in-memory caching system. Generally, it’s used to speed up web applications by caching large volumes of data in memory from page load requests or API calls. This article explains how to install and configure Memcached on Ubuntu 20.04.

Install Memcached on Ubuntu#

The standard Ubuntu repositories includes the Memcached package. Perform the following steps to install and configure Memcached on Ubuntu 20.04

Step 1 – Installing Memcached#

Run the following command as root or user with sudo privileges:

First update the package index list by typing:

sudo apt update

Now install the Memcached and required dependencies by following command:

sudo apt install memcached libmemcached-tools

Step 2 – Verify Installation#

After the completion of installation, the Memcached service will be start automatically. You can check the status for the service by typing:

sudo systemctl status memcached

It should show output something like this:

● memcached.service - memcached daemon
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/memcached.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Mon 2020-07-20 09:32:01 UTC; 57s ago

Step 3 – Configure Memcached#

By default, Memcached is set to listen only on localhost. Edit the /etc/memcached.conf file to configure the Memcached options. Generally, the default configuration settings are sufficient for most users.

Step 4 – Remote Access#

It is always recommended, do not allow remote access. It’s always risk of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack if the Memcached is configured improper. To allow remote access to the Memcached server, you need to configure the firewall and open the Memcached UDP port 11211 only from trusted clients.

For example, if you want to connect to the Memcached server over a private network, and the Memcached server IP is 192.168.93.125, and the client’s IP address is 192.168.123.32.

At first, you should edit the /etc/memcached.conf file and set the service to listen on the server’s private networking interface:

sudo nano /etc/memcached.conf

Find the line which starts with -l 127.0.0.1 and replace 127.0.0.1 with the server IP address 192.168.93.125.

-l 192.168.93.125

Restart the Memcached service for the changes to take effect:

sudo systemctl restart memcached

Now, open the Memcached port in the firewall:

sudo ufw allow from 192.168.123.32 to any port 11211

Conclusion#

We hope you learned successfully how to install Memcached on Ubuntu 20.04. Visit Memcached Wiki to know more about Memcached.

If you have any questions or feedback, please leave a comment below.