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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​

./laradock start manticore

Name any other services alongside it to start them together, for example ./laradock start manticore workspace.

Stop Manticore​

Stopping just pauses the container; your data is safe (it lives under DATA_PATH_HOST/manticore/data):

./laradock stop manticore

To delete the container entirely (the data on disk is still untouched):

./laradock remove manticore

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"

Create an index​

The bundled manticore/config/sphinx.conf defines one sample real-time index, testrt. You don't have to edit that file to add more, Manticore supports creating real-time tables straight from SphinxQL (no restart needed, and they persist across restarts):

mysql -h127.0.0.1 -P9306 -e "CREATE TABLE products(title text, content text, gid int) rt_mem_limit='128M';"

Insert and query it the same way:

mysql -h127.0.0.1 -P9306 -e "INSERT INTO products(id, title, content, gid) VALUES (1, 'first post', 'hello world', 10);"
mysql -h127.0.0.1 -P9306 -e "SELECT * FROM products WHERE MATCH('hello');"

Indexes defined in sphinx.conf (like testrt) instead require a config edit and a restart, see Common issues.

Check index and server health​

mysql -h127.0.0.1 -P9306 -e "SHOW TABLES;"
mysql -h127.0.0.1 -P9306 -e "SHOW STATUS;"

SHOW TABLES lists every index Manticore currently knows about (both the ones from sphinx.conf and any created live over SphinxQL). SHOW STATUS reports uptime, connections, and query counters, useful for confirming the server is actually healthy rather than just "container running."

Backup and restore​

Manticore's real-time indexes keep recent writes in memory before they're flushed to disk, so flush before copying files to make sure the backup is complete:

mysql -h127.0.0.1 -P9306 -e "FLUSH RTINDEX testrt;"

Repeat for each real-time index you care about (or use FLUSH RTINDEXES; in newer versions to flush all of them at once).

Back up by archiving the data directory on your host, no need to enter the container:

tar -czf manticore-backup.tar.gz -C "${DATA_PATH_HOST:-~/.laradock/data}/manticore" data

Restore into a fresh container by stopping it, clearing the data folder, extracting your archive back in, then starting again:

./laradock stop manticore
rm -rf "${DATA_PATH_HOST:-~/.laradock/data}/manticore/data"
tar -xzf manticore-backup.tar.gz -C "${DATA_PATH_HOST:-~/.laradock/data}/manticore"
./laradock start manticore

Start completely fresh (wipe all data)​

To throw away every index and start Manticore from a clean, empty state (⚠️ this permanently deletes all indexed data, back up first if you need anything):

./laradock stop manticore
./laradock remove manticore
rm -rf "${DATA_PATH_HOST:-~/.laradock/data}/manticore/data"
./laradock start manticore

This only wipes the data folder, not manticore/config/sphinx.conf (that's a bind-mounted config file, not generated data), so any indexes defined there come back automatically on next start. Indexes you created live over SphinxQL are gone for good since they only ever lived in data.

Talk to this service from another Laradock project​

Each Laradock project is its own isolated Docker network by default, so a second project's containers can't reach this Manticore by container name out of the box. Easiest fix: the ports are already published, have the other project connect to your host machine's address instead of manticore, for example host.docker.internal (Docker Desktop) on this project's MANTICORE_SPHINXQL_PORT or MANTICORE_HTTP_PORT. Make sure the two projects use different ports if they're both running at once.

Common issues​

  • sphinx.conf edits don't take effect. It's bind-mounted, so edits apply after a container restart (./laradock restart manticore), no rebuild needed.
  • Image drifts over time. Because the image isn't version-pinned, ./laradock rebuild 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.
  • Writes to a real-time index disappear after a crash. You skipped the FLUSH RTINDEX step above before copying/backing up data, or the container was killed hard enough that recent writes never made it to the binlog.

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