Sphinx Search

[amcd]

Originally Posted by wtrk

i have a question, can sphinx also search other databases and show the results in vbulletin? like for example can i consolidate a search of vbulletin, photopost and reviewpost into a single result displayed in vbulletin with sphinx?

Since sphinx is a general purpose search tool, I suppose it could be done, but not with the code posted in this thread. It would require major modification of search.php and related modules and templates.

[wtrk]

Originally Posted by amcd

Since sphinx is a general purpose search tool, I suppose it could be done, but not with the code posted in this thread. It would require major modification of search.php and related modules and templates.

i understand that thats why beyond the scope of this thread. i just wanted to know if it was possible. thanks.

[RedWingFan]

I'm somewhat geeked: I have Sphinx running on my test forum! Finally got indexer and searchd to run and load. NO errors from what I can tell--this has to be a first!

I did the changes to vB 3.7 (uploaded search_sphinx.php, sphinxapi.php, added the two plugins), but I can't tell if I'm using Sphinx or not. Is there any way I can tell? Searches were fast to begin with on this smaller forum, so time is not a good benchmark here. Any other way to tell? I did enter a new post with the word "privileges" in it, and I see it did not show up in Sphinx (using search at the command line) after I ran the "indexer --all" command for a second time.

I just want to see IF it is working before I test HOW it is working. It seems like it went too easily for it to be working properly...

[RedWingFan]

It's working. If I kill searchd, I get an error that it can't connect to "localhost". I now have cron running as well, and new posts are indexed within three minutes.

Speed is actually slightly slower for Sphinx on this smaller test forum, but we don't have that many posts. I may bite the bullet and try this on the main forum soon.

[RedWingFan]

Originally Posted by BillP

We are running the new plugin with 3.7.1

When one clicks on a username and chooses "Find More Posts By <user>", the following warning appears on the "Your search is in progress" page:


Then it refreshes, and returns numerous errors followed by the results:

Warning: strpos() [function.strpos]: Empty delimiter in [path]/includes/functions_search.php on line 829

Any ideas on how to fix this?

We just had this same error. I can't duplicate it myself, but another user mentioned that he was doing an advanced search for "Threads started by user" and got multiple instances of this error. I tried the same search (no other options chosen), and it worked OK. Seems random...?

[eoc_Jason]

Originally Posted by wtrk

i have a question, can sphinx also search other databases and show the results in vbulletin? like for example can i consolidate a search of vbulletin, photopost and reviewpost into a single result displayed in vbulletin with sphinx?

There's no reason you couldn't... But it would be custom coding for you... You would have to create extra sources to index first. Then deal with how you are going to search them.

P.S. Sphinx 0.9.8 Gold (or whatever you want to call the final) has been released today!

[RedWingFan]

Originally Posted by RedWingFan

We just had this same error. I can't duplicate it myself, but another user mentioned that he was doing an advanced search for "Threads started by user" and got multiple instances of this error. I tried the same search (no other options chosen), and it worked OK. Seems random...?

Not random. If I choose "View Results as Posts", I get the errors. If I view results as threads, no errors.

Warning: strpos() [function.strpos]: Empty delimiter in [path]/includes/functions_search.php on line 829

The proper search results do display below, however...

[mute]

I just upgraded to 0.9.8, but am running some incredibly old search.php code (on 3.6). So far so good. I had to do a major reorg of my sphinx.conf, but I couldn't resist some of the new options (unlink_old is nice because this box has limited diskspace).

I'm curious if anyone has a definitive status report on what is and is not working properly on 3.7. I see orban has updated the first post recently, but I wasn't sure if all of the quirks that are listed were still applicable.

We're not ready to upgrade to 3.7 yet, but I'd really like to have "Find all posts/threads by user" hitting Sphinx when we do, those queries are sort of brutal for us.

Also, does anyone have a decent guide on "How to search" laying around? Our users seem to have trouble figuring out search operands, searching for phrases, etc. I was hoping someone who uses sphinx might have a FAQ entry done up that explains what you can and can't do with this setup.

[Simetrical]

Originally Posted by mute

We're not ready to upgrade to 3.7 yet, but I'd really like to have "Find all posts/threads by user" hitting Sphinx when we do, those queries are sort of brutal for us.

If it only searches for posts by the user and nothing else (no search terms added), you should just add an index on (userid, dateline) to your post table. Then it will be as fast as fetching the posts for a thread. You don't need an external engine like Sphinx to do this fast. The situation with threads is similar, (postuserid, dateline). Use Sphinx for fulltext searching; MySQL proper is still just fine for searches without any text aspect.

[mute]

Originally Posted by Simetrical

If it only searches for posts by the user and nothing else (no search terms added), you should just add an index on (userid, dateline) to your post table. Then it will be as fast as fetching the posts for a thread. You don't need an external engine like Sphinx to do this fast. The situation with threads is similar, (postuserid, dateline). Use Sphinx for fulltext searching; MySQL proper is still just fine for searches without any text aspect.

We have 47 million posts, and 2.6 million threads. Trust me, it puts a hurting even on our 8-way Opteron box with 12gb of ram.