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Manticore Search

Manticore Search is an open-source search engine forked from Sphinx, built for fast full-text and vector search. It's a lighter-weight alternative to Elasticsearch or Solr, speaking its own SphinxQL dialect (MySQL wire protocol) as well as a JSON/HTTP API. Laradock runs it as its own container, built straight from the official manticoresearch/manticore image.

Start Manticore​

docker compose up -d manticore

Stop Manticore​

docker compose stop manticore

This stops the container without deleting its data. Data lives under DATA_PATH_HOST/manticore/data.

Configuration​

All settings live in manticore/defaults.env and can be overridden by adding the same line to your own .env:

VariableDefaultWhat it does
MANTICORE_CONFIG_PATH./manticore/configFolder mounted to /etc/sphinxsearch, holds sphinx.conf.
MANTICORE_API_PORT9312Host-side port for the legacy Sphinx binary API (container port 9312).
MANTICORE_SPHINXQL_PORT9306Host-side port for SphinxQL, the MySQL-protocol query interface (container port 9306).
MANTICORE_HTTP_PORT9308Host-side port for the HTTP/JSON API (container port 9308).

There's no MANTICORE_VERSION variable, the manticore/Dockerfile builds from manticoresearch/manticore unpinned, so it always pulls whatever tag is latest at build time.

Query over SphinxQL​

SphinxQL speaks the MySQL protocol, so any MySQL client works:

mysql -h127.0.0.1 -P9306

No username or password is required by default.

Query over HTTP​

curl -s http://localhost:9308/sql -d "query=show tables"

Common issues​

  • Config edits don't take effect. manticore/config/sphinx.conf is bind-mounted, so edits apply after a container restart (docker compose restart manticore), no rebuild needed.
  • Image drifts over time. Because the image isn't version-pinned, docker compose build --no-cache manticore can pull a newer Manticore release than you tested against. Pin a tag yourself in manticore/Dockerfile if you need reproducibility.
  • Port already in use on your host. Change MANTICORE_SPHINXQL_PORT, MANTICORE_API_PORT, or MANTICORE_HTTP_PORT in .env and restart.
  • Data not persisting. Confirm DATA_PATH_HOST is set consistently, Manticore's index data and logs live at DATA_PATH_HOST/manticore/data and DATA_PATH_HOST/manticore/log.

Need OLAP analytics instead? See ClickHouse. Back to the Getting Started guide.