Memcached is crashing a lot. Why?

Question

I am using memcached and it seems to be crashing a lot lately. Sometimes a deploy can cause it to crash on ActionController::Base.cache_store.clear and sometimes it happens out of nowhere.

How can I get to the root cause of this? Does it have it's own log somewhere?

How can I make it more robust? Our site relies heavily on it and it going down brings the site down too. (We obviously need to figure out how to make our app still operate without it)

Any recommendations?

Answer 1

1. Check the config files where the stdio/stderror goes
2. Check the debug messages verbosity. Put it on max available.
3. What is the memory limit/memory segment sizes you use (again, in the config). make sure they are not too small.

Answer 2

If memcached is crashing a lot, it's likely because you're using bad tools. Is this CentOS perhaps? libevent 1.1 or similarly ancient version?