Running a sphinx server

This page assumes you need to maintain a production server with sphinx search daemon. For how to actually use sphinx in an application, search elsewhere.

Installing sphinx¶

wget http://www.sphinxsearch.com/downloads/sphinx-0.9.8-svn-r1112.tar.gz
tar xzvf sphinx-0.9.8-svn-r1112.tar.gz
cd sphinx-0.9.8-svn-r1112
sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient15-dev
./configure
make
sudo make install

Starting sphinx¶

From the command line:

cd /usr/app/myproject
rake ts:start RAILS_ENV=production

From capistrano recipe:

set :rake_cmd, (ENV['RAKE_CMD'] || nil)

desc "run rake remotely"
task :rake_exec do
  if rake_cmd
    run "cd #{current_path} && rake #{rake_cmd} RAILS_ENV=production"
  end
end

namespace :ts do 
  desc "start sphinx searchd"
  task :start do
    set :rake_cmd, "ts:start" 
    rake_exec
  end

  desc "stop sphinx searchd"
  task :stop do
    set :rake_cmd, "ts:stop" 
    rake_exec
  end
end

Running multiple search daemons¶

If you are running multiple web applications that need sphinx, you need to run the search daemons on different ports.

For rails, here is how you would do so:

codetitle. config/sphinx.yml

production:
  port: 3314
  address: localhost

Then, you need to rebuild the production.sphinx.conf file:

rake ts:config RAILS_ENV=production

This should update the port in the config for production mode:

codetitle. config/production.sphinx.conf

...
searchd
{
  address = localhost
  port = 3314
  log = /usr/apps/crabgrass/log/searchd.log
  query_log = /usr/apps/crabgrass/log/searchd.query.log
  read_timeout = 5
  max_children = 30
  pid_file = /usr/apps/crabgrass/log/searchd.production.pid
  max_matches = 1000
}
...

All the sphinx rake commands¶

rake ts:config
Generate the Sphinx configuration file using Thinking Sphinx’s settings

rake ts:in
Index data for Sphinx using Thinking Sphinx’s settings

rake ts:index
Index data for Sphinx using Thinking Sphinx’s settings

rake ts:restart
Restart Sphinx

rake ts:start
Start a Sphinx searchd daemon using Thinking Sphinx’s settings

rake ts:stop
Stop Sphinx using Thinking Sphinx’s settings