Sphinx Search

[RedWingFan]

Originally Posted by amcd

I have no idea. Maybe someone from Jelsoft can answer. Or you can try reading the AdminCP PHP script which changes search type.

Well, I changed the value in the database, regenerated the options datastore, and it's working properly (as though I had chosen "Fulltext"). So that's a success!

Originally Posted by UK Jimbo

RedWingFan do you have a log of what the indexer is doing incuding any messages from the cronjobs?

Memory allocation error during rotate. It happened again last night, and I found the memory allocation error in the log. I changed this value in my conf file: "seamless_rotate=0". Searching will be interrupted a bit when the indexes rotate, but since I do this during off-hours, it won't affect many users at all. (Apparently, Sphinx's indexer will load indexes into RAM so that users can still search while the old indexes are being replaced by the new.) The mem_limit is at 512MB right now, but I don't want to increase that and possibly starve everything else on the server. http://www.sphinxsearch.com/docs/cur...eamless-rotate

One other setting looks a bit deceptive: max_matches is set for 1000 in my conf file, but I'm only pulling in 500 in vB's search. What Sphinx does, for max_matches, is send back the BEST 1000 matches, not necessarily just running the search and returning the FIRST 1000 matches it finds. My point here is that I should be setting the maximum search results in the conf file and in vB to be the same number. Basically I'm searching for 1000 best matches, but throwing away 500 of them for visitors. I will probably bump the forum to display those 1000 matches. Visitors will think they're getting a bonus. http://www.sphinxsearch.com/docs/cur...nf-max-matches

Here is something else: http://www.sphinxsearch.com/docs/cur...nf-enable-star . You can search Sphinx using the asterisk ("star") as a wildcard. I have thought of enabling this, but I am thinking that the search_sphinx.php file (or vB itself) would strip out the asterisk and make no difference during searches. This would be a neat addition. Has anyone else here tried it?

I came across another option for the indexer. When indexing, there is a --merge option for the indexer, which will merge your delta indexes with your main indexes, rather than generating new indexes once per day. I have it running now where the indexes are regenerated once each night. Would there be any disadvantage to using merge? If it goes correctly, it should work just as well, since you have essentially the same indexes when you're finished. But I can also see a tiny opportunity for the main indexes to get corrupted. Otherwise, --merge takes less time and CPU cycles, which is attractive. http://www.sphinxsearch.com/docs/cur...#index-merging

Finally, I see that Sphinx also has a plugin for MySQL, where you can specify using SphinxSE as an additional engine in MySQL. It will not do us much good here, I know, but I could see a future use for it between vB and Sphinx. http://www.sphinxsearch.com/docs/current.html#sphinxse

IMHO, given how much Sphinx's popularity is growing, and after having pored over the documentation this afternoon, it is disappointing that there apparently will not be any built-in support for Sphinx in vB 4.0. Sphinx can do a lot, and is a lot more flexible, than the built-in vB search, as well as MySQL's own fulltext indexing. A shame we'll probably still have to patch these hacks together to use Sphinx...