# Configuring Sphinx

Before you can get Sphinx working with the Sphinx Storage Engine on MariaDB, you need to configure it.

* The default configuration file is called `sphinx.conf`, usually located in `/etc/sphinxsearch` (Debian/Ubuntu), `/etc/sphinx/sphinx.conf.` (Red Hat/CentOS) or `C:\Sphinx\sphinx.conf` (Windows).

If it doesn't already exist, you can use the sample configuration file, `sphinx.conf.dist`. There is also sample data supplied that we can use for testing. Load the sample data (which creates two tables, `documents` and `tags` in the `test` database), for example:

`mysql -u test < /usr/local/sphinx/etc/example.sql` (Red Hat, CentOS)`mysql -u test < /usr/share/doc/sphinxsearch/example-conf/example.sql` (Debian/Ubuntu)

The sample configuration file documents the available options. You will need to make at least a few changes. A MariaDB user with permission to access the database must be created:

```sql
CREATE USER 'sphinx'@localhost 
  IDENTIFIED BY 'sphinx_password';
GRANT SELECT ON test.* TO 'sphinx'@localhost;
```

Add these details to the `mysql` section of the config file:

```sql
sql_host = localhost 
sql_user = sphinx 
sql_pass = sphinx_password 
sql_db   = test 
sql_port = 3306
```

On Windows, the `path` and `pid` lines will need to be changed to reflect a valid path, usually as follows:

```
path = C:\Sphinx\docsidx
...
pid_file = C:\Sphinx\sphinx.pid
```

The query in the configuration files is the query that are used for building the index. In the sample data, this is:

```sql
sql_query = \
  SELECT id, group_id, UNIX_TIMESTAMP(date_added) AS date_added, title, content \
  FROM documents
```

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