Sphinx search for vb 4.x?

[katie hunter]

Hi, I am currently trying to rebuilt my search index after i upgraded to vb 4.x and it is taking so many hours because i have 4+ million posts.

Then i was searching and i came across this Sphinx search. Other than it is hard to integrate, why didn't vb use something like this that will help with big boards which have millions of posts? It seems vb search function is limited in many ways.

Is there a demo for the sphinx search? I couldn't find one so i can see how it looks or work, is it built inside vb search function?

https://marketplace.digitalpoint.com/sphinx-search-for-vbulletin-4.870/item

Performance & Scalability


A rough example of how much resources the default search uses, it took nearly 5 days to index 12M posts with the vB database search. The exact same content took 18 minutes to index with our Sphinx system.

http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum/vbulletin-announcements/vbulletin-announcements_aa/358967-sphinx-search-beta-for-vbulletin-4-0?highlight=sphinx

Is there a faster way to rebuilt search index? The issue i had, is that many of our members could not find results for topics that is already on the forum. I think that is because i never finished rebuilding the forum index.

Currently
Building Search Index Null Type 3008000

[snakes1100]

Never seen a demo from Shawn on the Sphinx plugin, you would require ssh access & proper user access in shell to install it on your server.

I would off the vb search as its a pita & slow.

There are obvious restrictions to the Sphinx search due to the vb db design, which will limit your sorting options, which shouldnt really be missed by your users.

[katie hunter]

If i have vbseo running, would it not work or conflict with it? since vbseo support is deceased now, so i have no idea

[snakes1100]

No vbseo isnt a issue.

The new tapatalk also works with shawns plugin as well.

[eva2000]

no demos but if you google for 'Digital Point modules: Sphinx-based search' the copyright from shawn's sphinx search link you will find vB forums using the plugin and get an idea of how fast search is

it's very fast ! alot of my private clients i setup vb4 digitalpoint sphinx search for and it's blistering fast for forums with up to 60 million posts from my own experience !

it isn't built inside specifically, search and search data are handled by sphinx search which you need to install from sphinxsearch.com on your server (hence why it isn't possible by default out of box - it's server software dependent on you installing and configuring properly sphinx search - just like vB is dependent on working apache, php and mysql setup) and search index data is usually on disk separately, default to /home/sphinx-data if you follow shawn's instructions but can be on any disk partition

edit: just quoting myself

To give you an idea, I installed this vB4 plugin and Sphinx search http://sphinxsearch.com/about/sphinx/ on a 5.5 million post forum. The difference and load compared to default vB4 search is like night and day.

Before
- vB4 default search took around 57-60 seconds to return a common keyword search term of their forums which locks on MySQL tables affecting all other vB members usage of the forums.

After
- Sphinx search + vB4 sphinx plugin installed to replace vB4 default search, the same search term only took 0.18 to 0.30 seconds to return - that's 333x times faster! And without any negative effect for other vB members' experience on the forums.

Also reindexing search (needed create proper indexes for search terms - without this indexing your vB search feature will not return any results), for

- vB4 default search on 5.5 million post forum took around 3-5 days to reindex. Note while reindexing, majority of search keyword terms will not return any results until the keyword term is added to the indexing. So for 3-5 days search will be essentially broken to members not able to search for keyword terms.
- With Sphinx search plugin, it only takes around 10-15 minutes - that's 720x times faster!

[BoyG]

Hi Eva, how do you reindex the DP Sphinx Plugin? Do you have a step by step walkthrough? Thanks!

[katie hunter]

<a href="https://forums.digitalpoint.com/threads/installation-instructions-changelog.2628794/" target="_blank">https://forums.digitalpoint.com/thre...gelog.2628794/</a>

[snakes1100]

That howto isnt for every system, php's binary isnt always in /usr/local/bin/php, that differs on systems.

[eva2000]

katie's linked url shows how to manually reindex. Usually for my private clients, I use a simple shell script I wrote that can automatically reindex sphinx search when run.

And yes as Anthony (snakes1100) has stated you will need to make sure correct php binary path is used.

[hostmela]

I get bellow error

Command: /usr/local/sphinx/bin/searchd --config /usr/local/sphinx/etc/vbulletin-sphinx.php
Result
Sphinx 2.1.7-id64-release (rel21-r4638)
Copyright (c) 2001-2014, Andrew Aksyonoff
Copyright (c) 2008-2014, Sphinx Technologies Inc (http://sphinxsearch.com)

using config file '/usr/local/sphinx/etc/vbulletin-sphinx.php'...
WARNING: key 'port' is deprecated in /usr/local/sphinx/etc/vbulletin-sphinx.php line 962; use 'listen' instead.
FATAL: port 0 is out of range

Please advise

[dany_danay]

My problem is:
root@server:~# /usr/bin/indexer --rotate --all
Sphinx 2.0.10-id64-release (rel20-r4501)
Copyright (c) 2001-2014, Andrew Aksyonoff
Copyright (c) 2008-2014, Sphinx Technologies Inc (http://sphinxsearch.com)

using config file '/etc/sphinxsearch/sphinx.conf'...
indexing index 'forobase'...
ERROR: index 'forobase': key 'path' not found.
indexing index 'foropost1'...
FATAL: failed to open /home/sphinx-data/foropost1.tmp.spl: No such file or directory, will not index. Try --rotate option.
root@server:~# php /usr/local/etc/sphinx.conf
Could not open input file: /usr/local/etc/sphinx.conf
root@server:~# php /usr/etc/sphinx.conf
Could not open input file: /usr/etc/sphinx.conf


Can somene help?

[Zachery]

If you purchased sphinxsearch from digitalpoint, he provides support for it last I checked.

[dany_danay]

no:(

[Zachery]

No what? You didn't purchase it?

[tommythejoat]

He only provides support for premium subscribers to his forums.

[Mark.B]

I do believe he is currently, er, otherwise indisposed. Though I'm unsure whether anyone else from his site provides support.

[highlander29]

I installed this a year and a half ago and the improvement in search performance was quite dramatic, not to mention the new features like private message search. Native search was getting quite slow. Our database had about 2.2M posts at the time