Error running multiple instances of sphinx (searchd) on the same box

Question

I have a MediaWiki server that hosts 4 instances of MediaWiki, and figure I should have a separate instance of sphinx search running for each. I did this by creating separate sphinx.conf files for each, and configuring them to run on separate ports

The setup of sphinx was pretty straightforward, and allowed me to specify a custom port for each instance, all the way up until SphinxSearch.php, which appears to re-define the port using wgSphinxSearch_port. I commented out this line, and the search appears to work fine for all instances.

The problem I have is that php throws an error at the top of the page:

Warning: assert() [function.assert]: Assertion failed in /var/lib/mediawiki-1.11.0/extensions/SphinxSearch/sphinxapi.php on line 251

I know I can turn display_errors off in php.ini, but that's not a real solution.

Has anyone else run into this problem? Am I the only one running multiple instances of searchd?

Why is this error being thrown, and how can I fix it?

Answer 1

That line is asserting that the specified port is an integer. My guess is that the assert fails since wgSphinxSearch_port is now undefined.

I don't know why you'd need multiple searchd instances. What prevents you from using a single instance and different indices for each wiki db?