Broken memcached gem/libmemchached deb on Ubuntu

This post follows on a previous post that was OS X centric.

To fix this issue follow the same steps (starting with the download of libmemcached-0.25.14.tar.gz) detailed here.

Because the source installation of libmemcached dropped the libs in a non-standard place (from a Debian/Ubuntu viewpoint) we need a little more magic before things will work.

As root, create /etc/ld.so.conf.d/libmemcached.conf:

# Manual installation of libmemcached dropped the libs in a non-standard place
/usr/local/lib

Run ldconfig to load the new config and test to ensure your script can now access libmemcached properly through the memcached gem.

Broken memcached gem/libmemchached port on OS X

Update (2009/04/22):
This post was originally only targeted at OS X but I have since noticed Ubuntu also having this same issue. Jump to my additional instructions for Ubuntu.

Recipe for disaster:

1. Use MacPorts for your package management
2. Use the ruby memcached gem
3. Use the libmemcached port as a dependency on the gem above
4. Upgrade your ports

Synopses
I upgraded all my ports on my MBP recently and one of the libs that was upgraded in the process was libmemcached (upgraded from v0.25 to v0.26). Unfortunately this has broken my access to memcached on my system (the script dies when trying to connect).

Not knowing what the problem may be I also upgraded my gem to v0.14 which then could not build. A quick search for the issue found this entry on the memcached discussion forum.

How now brown cow?
Evan Weaver, the maintainer of the memcached project, mentioned that libmemcached v0.26 lacks some critical patch and suggested people may have to wait for v0.27 to rectify things.

For those who cannot wait and have inconsistent, broken systems, Evan goes on to mention that you should currently use the libmemcached lib and memcached gem pair from here.

Here he also provides a convenient compatibility matrix so you can see how to align the different versions of libmemcached and the memcached gem.

Fix
Unfortunately this messes with things because libmemcached now needs to be installed as a source package in a system managed with MacPorts.

Yuck!

Unfortunately the choices are limited as the versions of libmemcached that ships as a port are either v0.26 (the latest, but broken for our purposes) or v0.25 (which aligns with the older v0.13 of the memcached gem).

First off remove any libmemcached ports you may have installed:

$ sudo port uninstall libmemcached

Download the libmemcached source archive, extract, build and install it:

ibm-99tvvxc:msp charl$ cd /var/tmp/
$ wget http://blog.evanweaver.com/files/libmemcached-0.25.14.tar.gz
--2009-02-24 10:50:40--  http://blog.evanweaver.com/files/libmemcached-0.25.14.tar.gz
Resolving blog.evanweaver.com... 208.78.102.192
Connecting to blog.evanweaver.com|208.78.102.192|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 428047 (418K) [application/x-gzip]
Saving to: `libmemcached-0.25.14.tar.gz'

100%[==========================================================>] 428,047      135K/s   in 3.1s 

2009-02-24 10:50:49 (135 KB/s) - `libmemcached-0.25.14.tar.gz' saved [428047/428047]

$ tar zxvf libmemcached-0.25.14.tar.gz
libmemcached-0.25.14/
[...]
$ cd libmemcached-0.25.14
$ ./configure
checking build system type... i386-apple-darwin9.6.0
checking host system type... i386-apple-darwin9.6.0
checking target system type... i386-apple-darwin9.6.0
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
[...]
$ make
Making all in docs
/usr/bin/pod2man -c "libmemcached" -r "" -s 3 libmemcached.pod > libmemcached.3
/usr/bin/pod2man -c "libmemcached" -r "" -s 3 libmemcached_examples.pod > libmemcached_examples.3
[...]
$ sudo make install
Password:
Making install in docs
make[2]: Nothing to be done for `install-exec-am'.
test -z "/usr/local/share/man/man1" || ../config/install-sh -c -d "/usr/local/share/man/man1"
/usr/bin/install -c -m 644 './memcat.1' '/usr/local/share/man/man1/memcat.1'
[...]

You may want to keep the source directory around so that you can easily uninstall (run sudo make uninstall in the source directory) the source installation later when the relevant aligned packaged versions are available for installation.

The final step is to install the gem:

$ sudo env ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386" gem install -r -V memcached --no-rdoc --no-ri
GET 200 OK: http://gems.rubyforge.org/latest_specs.4.8.gz
GET 200 OK: http://gems.github.com/latest_specs.4.8.gz
connection reset after 2 requests, retrying
GET 200 OK: http://gems.rubyforge.org/quick/Marshal.4.8/memcached-0.14.gemspec.rz
Installing gem memcached-0.14
/opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/memcached-0.14/BENCHMARKS
/opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/memcached-0.14/CHANGELOG
[...]
Successfully installed memcached-0.14
1 gem installed

Success!

We now have libmemcached v0.25.14 and the memcached v0.14 gem installed and we can go on with our lives.

Unholy Triumvirate: TextMate, MacPorts and Ruby

After switching back from a Ubuntu laptop to my MacBook Pro I was once again getting back to using TextMate to do some development and systems scripting. The combination of ruby and RubyGems have been a little bit rocky on OS X.

In part it was due to the default install of ruby on OS X, me using Fink for package management and then later switching from that to MacPorts.

Apple (and I presumably) suck cvyrf.

The problem I ran into was that after installing ruby and rb-rubygem via the ports system, TextMate no longer seems too interested in compiling ruby scripts when I hit CMD-R and provides me with a lovely:

"No such file to load ” rubygems

Checking Google the first listing I get is this.

It did not provide me with an applicable solution but got me thinking ... Either I have some environment variables that are not being set (or set incorrectly) or my library paths are screwy somehow.

An easy way to confirm the former is to check if your shell environment also suffers from the same malady:

$ ruby -r rubygems -e "p 1"
1

Not the problem then. Next step, let's pull out find and off a hunting we go:

$ sudo find / -name ruby -type f
Password:
/opt/local/bin/ruby /opt/local/var/db/dports/software/ruby/1.8.6_0/opt/local/bin/ruby /usr/bin/ruby

Let's see if there is some disparity between the ruby binary in /opt/local/bin and /usr/bin:

$ /usr/bin/ruby -v
ruby 1.8.2 (2004-12-25) [universal-darwin8.0]
$ /opt/local/bin/ruby -v
ruby 1.8.6 (2007-03-13 patchlevel 0) [i686-darwin8.9.1]

Well, what do you know. The version in /usr/bin is older and also looks for its libs in a non /opt location which means that it won't pick up the good work port has done for me. I moved /usr/bin/ruby to /tmp and added a soft link for /opt/local/bin/ruby to /usr/bin.

Running my script in TextMate now works like a charm!