Ok replying to own email is bad, but some more output (somehow left out the -vv option). And the server output (while executing the previous script) is such: /usr/local/memcached/bin/memcached -c 1000 -u root -vv -m 500 -p 11211 <3 server listening <7 new client connection <7 set zzz 1 0 1246902 >7 SERVER_ERROR out of memory <7 connection closed.