Install Memcached on Ubuntu / Debian

High-performance, distributed in-memory cache for key-value data.

Cachecachein-memorykey-valuedistributed

Installation

Server (Ubuntu repositories) · apt

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y memcached libmemcached-tools

libmemcached-tools adds helpers like memcstat and memcdump.

Verify the installation

Verify

$ memcached -V

Service

Start

$ sudo systemctl start memcached

Stop

$ sudo systemctl stop memcached

Status

$ sudo systemctl status memcached

Restart

$ sudo systemctl restart memcached

On boot

$ sudo systemctl enable memcached

Important files

Type	Path	Description
config	/etc/memcached.conf	Service configuration: memory (-m), listen address (-l), port (-p).

Default ports

11211

Command-line tools

memcachedThe cache server daemon.
memcstatQuery server statistics (from libmemcached-tools).
memcdumpDump the list of keys (from libmemcached-tools).

Uninstall

sudo apt purge -y memcached libmemcached-tools
sudo apt autoremove -y

Good to know

Ubuntu's default /etc/memcached.conf binds to 127.0.0.1 (-l 127.0.0.1) — keep it that way unless you firewall the port.
Set the cache size with the -m line (megabytes) in /etc/memcached.conf, then restart the service.
Memcached has no authentication; never expose port 11211 to untrusted networks.

Installation on Ubuntu

sudo apt install -y memcached libmemcached-tools installs the server and a few helper tools, and registers the memcached systemd service started automatically. Verify the binary with memcached -V.

Configuration

Unlike on macOS, Ubuntu provides /etc/memcached.conf, where each line is a flag: -m 64 (memory in MB), -l 127.0.0.1 (listen address), -p 11211 (port). Edit it, then sudo systemctl restart memcached to apply.

Security

The default config binds to 127.0.0.1, which is the safe choice — Memcached has no authentication. If you must listen on a LAN address, restrict access with a firewall and disable UDP (-U 0) to avoid amplification abuse.