[mgoetze]

Update
Ok I am 95% there with the help of Paul's note - thank you Paul. I was trying to follow the standard Sphinx install instructions AND the vbulletin specific instructions. The standard Sphinx instructions ask you to create a sphinx.conf file with database info and then run indexer --all. Basically you don't do any of that when using vbulletin. You simply install sphinx, make sure it is running, setup your vbulletin-sphinx.php file, run searchd --config /path to vbulletin-sphinx.php. (if gives an error about vbulletin_disk missing but the instructions say to ignore that)

NOW the next question is what is the proper way to index?? Here is what I found so far (the name of my database is "vbdb")
1. If I run the following command:
indexer -c /usr/local/sphinx/etc/vbulletin_sphinx.php --rotate --all
The indexer creates a bunch of vbdb_disk files in the /usr/local/sphinx/data/ directory, however, when you go to the forum and try to search there are no results.

2. If I go to Admin CP > Maintenance > General Update Tools > Rebuild Search Index, it creates a large binlog.001 file within the /usr/local/sphinx/data/ directory, AND searching on the forum does produce results.

It would appear #2 is the correct solution, however, when you start Sphinx it is clearly looking for the vbdb_disk index files, so I think somehow method #1 is correct. I even looked at our old server with a working VB5 install and sphinx and it had a binlog.001 file of only a few bytes and all the vbdb_disk files are much larger; and the search on that forum worked without issue. I'm sort of stuck at the moment and would appreciate any guidance from my fellow VB members.

Once I figure out the index issue, I also need to figure out how to keep the index up to date. Are we supposed to setup a cron job within crontab or within VB Admin CP. This doesnt appear to be covered in the document.

Thanks again,
Mark