Working on a project for which I am using MySQL. As much as I love my relational databases they may not always be the best tool for the job. As such, for the first time, I am evaluating other solutions. Redis seems like it might be a good fit for me so here are the steps I took to get it up and running from source on Ubuntu 13.04 Server.

• Make sure our required tools are installed:

  
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install make gcc


• Download the latest source and extract:

  
wget http://redis.googlecode.com/files/redis-2.6.x.tar.gz
tar xzfv redis-2.6.x.tar.gz


  Note
  I am using v2.6.14 for this example as it was the latest at the time of this writing. Simply replace x with your version number.

• Compile and install:

  
cd redis-2.6.x/
make -j y
sudo make install


  Note
  Replace y with the number of processor cores you would like to use. This step generally does not take long so if you wanted to omit -j and its argument all together that would also work.

• Copy and open Redis configuration:

  
sudo mkdir /etc/redis/
sudo cp redis.conf /etc/redis/
sudo nano /etc/redis/redis.conf


  Change the following options:

  
daemonize yes
dir /var/lib/redis/
syslog-enabled yes
syslog-ident redis
syslog-facility local0


  Note
  These are the bare minimum changes. You will probably want to scan the file and change it to better suit your needs.

• Remove working directory:

  
cd ../
rm -rf redis-2.6.x/
rm redis-2.6.x.tar.gz


• Add user:

  
sudo useradd redis


• Create data directories:

  
sudo mkdir /var/lib/redis/
sudo chown redis:redis /var/lib/redis/
sudo mkdir /var/log/redis/
sudo chown redis:redis /var/log/redis/


• Setup start up script:

  
sudo nano /etc/init.d/redis-server


  Within this file add the following and save/close:

  
#! /bin/sh

  ### BEGIN INIT INFO
  # Provides: redis-server
  # Required-Start: $syslog $remote_fs
  # Required-Stop: $syslog $remote_fs
  # Should-Start: $local_fs
  # Should-Stop: $local_fs
  # Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
  # Default-Stop: 0 1 6
  # Short-Description: redis-server - Persistent key-value db
  # Description: redis-server - Persistent key-value db
  ### END INIT INFO

  PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
  DAEMON=/usr/local/bin/redis-server
  DAEMON_ARGS=/etc/redis/redis.conf
  NAME=redis-server
  DESC=redis-server
  PIDFILE=/var/run/redis.pid

  test -x $DAEMON || exit 0

  set -e

  case "$1" in
  start)
  echo -n "Starting $DESC: "

  touch $PIDFILE
  chown redis:redis $PIDFILE

  if start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --umask 007 --pidfile $PIDFILE --chuid redis:redis --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_ARGS
  then
  echo "$NAME."
  else
  echo "failed"
  fi

  ;;

  stop)
  echo -n "Stopping $DESC: "

  if start-stop-daemon --stop --retry 10 --quiet --oknodo --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON
  then
  echo "$NAME."
  else
  echo "failed"
  fi

  rm -f $PIDFILE

  ;;

  restart|force-reload)
  ${0} stop
  ${0} start

  ;;

  status)
  echo -n "$DESC is "

  if start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --signal 0 --name ${NAME} --pidfile ${PIDFILE}
  then
  echo "running"
  else
  echo "not running"

  exit 1
  fi

  ;;

  *)
  echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/$NAME {start|stop|restart|force-reload}" >&2

  exit 1

  ;;
  esac

  exit 0


  Make script executable:

  
sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/redis-server
sudo update-rc.d redis-server defaults


• Start the server:

  
sudo service redis-server start


---

Notes

• I have not experimented with this on a 32-bit machine but I doubt it would be very useful for anything other than seeing what is what. If you are going to use this in anything remotely resembling a production environment I would use a 64-bit machine without question.
• I disabled snapshotting for my tests as I will not need it. If you end up using it– such as in the default configuration– you might want to add vm.overcommit_memory = 1 to /etc/sysctl.conf.

Sources
http://www.redis.io/download/
http://www.denofubiquity.com/nosql/412/