> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://mariadb.com/docs/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://mariadb.com/docs/server/server-usage/storage-engines/sphinx-storage-engine/configuring-sphinx.md).

# Configuring Sphinx

A guide to configuring the Sphinx daemon (searchd) to index data from MariaDB, including setting up sphinx.conf and creating necessary users.

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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