How To Install Memcached on openSUSE

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Memcached on openSUSE. In the fast-paced world of web development, performance is everything. Users expect websites and applications to load quickly, and any delay can result in lost revenue or decreased engagement. This is where Memcached, a high-performance distributed caching system, comes into play. Memcached is an open-source, high-performance, distributed memory object caching system. It is commonly used to speed up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the Memcached on openSUSE.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: openSUSE (either Leap or Tumbleweed).
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• You will need access to the terminal to execute commands. openSUSE provides the Terminal application for this purpose. It can be found in your Applications menu.
• You’ll need an active internet connection to download Memcached and its dependencies.
• You’ll need administrative (root) access or a user account with sudo privileges.

Install Memcached on openSUSE

Step 1. Start by refreshing your repositories and updating your system to ensure all packages are up to date. This is a crucial step as it ensures that you have the latest security patches and software updates. You can do this by running the following command:

sudo zypper refresh
sudo zypper update

Step 2. Installing Memcached on openSUSE.

Memcached can be installed from the default openSUSE repositories using the zypper package manager. The zypper package manager is a powerful command-line tool for managing software on openSUSE. To install Memcached, run the following command:

sudo zypper install memcached

After the installation, you can verify it by running:

rpm -qi memcached

This command will display detailed information about the installed Memcached package.

Step 3. Configure Memcached.

Once Memcached is installed, you will need to configure it. This typically involves editing the Memcached configuration file located at /etc/sysconfig/memcached. This file allows you to set various parameters such as the memory limit, the IP address Memcached should listen on, and the maximum number of simultaneous connections Memcached should accept.

To edit the configuration file, use the following command:

sudo nano /etc/sysconfig/memcached

In this file, you can set parameters like:

• CACHESIZE: The maximum amount of memory Memcached should use for item storage (in megabytes).
• OPTIONS: Any additional options you want to pass to the Memcached daemon.

For example, to set the memory limit to 256MB, you would modify the CACHESIZE line in the configuration file to look like this:

CACHESIZE="256"

With Memcached installed and configured, the next step is to start the service and enable it to start automatically at boot time. You can do this using the systemctl command:

sudo systemctl enable memcached.service
sudo systemctl start memcached.service
sudo systemctl status memcached.service

Step 4. Configure Firewall.

If you have a firewall enabled, add a rule to allow traffic on the Memcached port (default is 11211):

sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=11211/tcp --permanent
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Step 5. Verify Memcached Installation.

After starting the Memcached service, it’s a good idea to verify that everything is working as expected. You can do this by checking the Memcached service’s statistics. Memcached comes with a command-line tool called memcached-tool that you can use to check the status of the service, the amount of memory used, and the number of connections.

To check the Memcached service’s statistics, run:

memcached-tool localhost:11211 stats

This command will display a list of statistics about the Memcached service, including the current number of items stored, the amount of memory used, and the number of connections.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Memcached. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing Memcached on your openSUSE system. For additional or useful information, we recommend you check the official Memcached website.