All was well, then I rebooted the server.
Right now:
$ ps aux | grep memcache
1000 27168 0.0 0.0 121972 1056 pts/0 Sl 15:18 0:00 memcached -m 64 -p 11211 -u nobody -l 127.0.0.1
1000 27816 0.0 0.0 7628 956 pts/0 S+ 15:36 0:00 grep memcache
meanwhile the rails app's log is getting tons of this:
MemCacheError (No connection to server (localhost:11211 DEAD (Timeout::Error: execution expired), will retry at Tue Feb 15 15:35:55 -0600 2011)): No connection to server (localhost:11211 DEAD (Timeout::Error: execution expired), will retry at Tue Feb 15 15:35:55 -0600 2011)
MemCacheError (No connection to server (localhost:11211 DEAD (Timeout::Error: execution expired), will retry at Tue Feb 15 15:35:55 -0600 2011)): No connection to server (localhost:11211 DEAD (Timeout::Error: execution expired), will retry at Tue Feb 15 15:35:55 -0600 2011)
MemCacheError (No connection to server (localhost:11211 DEAD (Timeout::Error: execution expired), will retry at Tue Feb 15 15:35:55 -0600 2011)): No connection to server (localhost:11211 DEAD (Timeout::Error: execution expired), will retry at Tue Feb 15 15:35:55 -0600 2011)
MemCacheError (No connection to server (localhost:11211 DEAD (Timeout::Error: execution expired), will retry at Tue Feb 15 15:35:55 -0600 2011)): No connection to server (localhost:11211 DEAD (Timeout::Error: execution expired), will retry at Tue Feb 15 15:35:55 -0600 2011)
MemCacheError (No connection to server (localhost:11211 DEAD (Timeout::Error: execution expired), will retry at Tue Feb 15 15:35:56 -0600 2011)): No connection to server (localhost:11211 DEAD (Timeout::Error: execution expired), will retry at Tue Feb 15 15:35:56 -0600 2011)
MemCacheError (No connection to server (localhost:11211 DEAD (Timeout::Error: execution expired), will retry at Tue Feb 15 15:35:56 -0600 2011)): No connection to server (localhost:11211 DEAD (Timeout::Error: execution expired), will retry at Tue Feb 15 15:35:56 -0600 2011)
MemCacheError (No connection to server (localhost:11211 DEAD (Timeout::Error: execution expired), will retry at Tue Feb 15 15:35:56 -0600 2011)): No connection to server (localhost:11211 DEAD (Timeout::Error: execution expired), will retry at Tue Feb 15 15:35:56 -0600 2011)
MemCacheError (No connection to server (localhost:11211 DEAD (Timeout::Error: execution expired), will retry at Tue Feb 15 15:35:56 -0600 2011)): No connection to server (localhost:11211 DEAD (Timeout::Error: execution expired), will retry at Tue Feb 15 15:35:56 -0600 2011)
Being that I'm more of a developer than a server guy, and being that we don't really have a "server guy," and this being in production... where do I start with this?