To use SphinxSE with MariaDB you need to first download and install Sphinx.

Complete Sphinx documentation is available on the Sphinx website.

Tips for Installing Sphinx

libexpat

One library we know you will need on Linux before you can install Sphinx is libexpat. If it is not installed, you will get the warning checking for libexpat... not found. On Suse the package is called libexpat-devel, on Ubuntu the package is called libexpat1-dev.

MariaDB detection

If you run into problems with MariaDB not being detected, use the following options:

 --with-mysql            compile with MySQL support (default is enabled)
 --with-mysql-includes   path to MySQL header files
 --with-mysql-libs       path to MySQL libraries

The above will tell the configure script where your MySQL/MariaDB installation is.

Testing Sphinx

After installing Sphinx, you can check that things are working in MariaDB by doing the following:

cd installation-dir/mysql-test
./mysql-test-run --suite=sphinx

If the above test doesn't pass, check the logs in the 'var' directory. If there is a problem with the sphinx installation, the reason can probably be found in the log file at: var/log/sphinx.sphinx/searchd/sphinx.log.