Thinking sphinx doesn't start - “Failed to start searchd daemon”

Question

I try to start thinking sphinx on my server but it doesn\'t want to work.

I do:

$ rake thinking_sphinx:index && rake thinking_sphinx:start
         


        

Answer 1

It sounds like init has already started an instance of searchd bound to port 9312.

There are a few solutions:

1. Kill the system instance of searchd: sudo service sphinxsearch stop.
2. Modify config/sphinx.yml and tell Sphinx to use a different port in production. (config/thinking_sphinx.yml if you're using TS 3.x)
3. Configure your server to not start searchd when the system boots up. On Ubuntu 14.04 you can do that by editing /etc/defaults/sphinxsearch and setting START=no.

Our server runs Ubuntu, and I installed Sphinx from the Debian package available on the Sphinx website.