There is a partial fix in the 1.4.5-1+deb6u1 Version. It seems to be from this site, (in german) http://blog.nevalon.de/de/wie-kann-ich-mehrere-instanzen-von-memcached-auf-einem-server-laufen-lassenhow-can-i-run-multiple-instances-of-memcached-on-one-server-20090729
It's just missing a patch to /usr/share/memcached/scripts/start-memcached 26,30d25 if (scalar(@ARGV) == 2) { $etcfile = shift(@ARGV); $pidfile = shift(@ARGV); } With this in place running multipl instances works fine. config are kept in /etc/memcached_*.conf. Best regards, Andreas