Memcache error: Failed reading line from stream (0

Question

I get some variation of the following error when our server gets put under any significant load. I've Googled for hours about it and tried everything (including upgrading to the latest versions and clean installs). I've read all the posts about it here on SA, but can't figure it out. A lot of people are having the same problem, but no one seems to have a definitive answer. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Zend_Session_Exception' with message 'Zend_Session::start() - /var/www/trunk/library/Zend/Cache/Backend/Memcached.php(Line:180): Error #8 Memcache::get() [memcache.get]: Server localhost (tcp 11211) failed with: Failed reading line from stream (0) Array

We have a copy of our production environment for testing and everything works great until we start load-testing. I think the biggest object stored is about 170KB, but it will probably be about 500KB when all is said and done (well below the 1MB limit). Just FYI: Memcache gets hit about 10-20 times per page load. Here's the memcached settings:

PORT="11211"
USER="memcached"
MAXCONN="1024"
CACHESIZE="64"
OPTIONS=""

I'm running Memcache 1.4.5 with version 2.2.6 of the PHP-memcache module. PHP is version 5.2.6. memcache details from php -i:

memcache

memcache support => enabled
Active persistent connections => 0
Version => 2.2.6
Revision => $Revision: 303962 $

Directive => Local Value => Master Value
memcache.allow_failover => 1 => 1
memcache.chunk_size => 8192 => 8192
memcache.default_port => 11211 => 11211
memcache.default_timeout_ms => 1000 => 1000
memcache.hash_function => crc32 => crc32
memcache.hash_strategy => standard => standard
memcache.max_failover_attempts => 20 => 20

Thanks everyone

Answer 1

10-20 times per page load? Try using persistent connections, then. I would also try running a second memcached instance and add it to the pool.