After it took me weeks, if not months, to figure out how to do it correctly here is a guide (well, script) to do it. (DEBIAN 6 ONLY - DO NOT SIMPLY RUN THIS - READ AND EDIT)
groupadd mysql useradd -r -g mysql mysql echo "deb http://packages.dotdeb.org stable all" >> /etc/apt/sources.list echo "deb-src http://packages.dotdeb.org stable all" >> /etc/apt/sources.list wget http://www.dotdeb.org/dotdeb.gpg && cat dotdeb.gpg | apt-key add - && rm dotdeb.gpg apt-get update apt-get install libncurses5-dev unzip screen -y apt-get build-dep mysql-server-5.5 -y apt-get source mysql-server-5.5 -y wget http://sphinxsearch.com/files/sphinx-2.0.4-release.tar.gz wget "http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.5/mysql-5.5.23.tar.gz/from/http://mirror.leaseweb.com/mysql/" -O mysql-5.5.23.tar.gz tar -xvzf mysql-5.5.23.tar.gz tar -xvzf sphinx-2.0.4-release.tar.gz rm *.tar.gz rm mysql-5.5_5.5.23-1~dotdeb.0.dsc mv mysql-5.5.23 mysql-5.5.23-ORG cp -a mysql-5.5.23-ORG/Docs mysql-5.5-5.5.23/ cp -R /root/sphinx-2.0.4-release/mysqlse /root/mysql-5.5-5.5.23/storage/sphinx cd mysql-5.5-5.5.23/ sh BUILD/autorun.sh ./configure --build=x86_64-linux-gnu --host=x86_64-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr --exec-prefix=/usr --libexecdir=/usr/sbin --datadir=/usr/share --localstatedir=/var/lib/mysql --includedir=/usr/include --infodir=/usr/share/info --mandir=/usr/share/man --with-server-suffix="williams-finest-blent" --with-comment="(Debian6)" --with-system-type="debian-linux-gnu" --enable-shared --enable-thread-safe-client --enable-assembler --enable-local-infile --with-pstack --with-fast-mutexes --with-big-tables --with-unix-socket-path=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock --with-mysqld-user=mysql --with-libwrap --without-readline --with-ssl --without-docs --with-extra-charsets=all --without-ndbcluster --with-embedded-server --with-embedded-privilege-control make make install make install scripts mkdir /etc/mysql cd /etc/mysql/ ######add my.cnf download/creation here###### cd ######download mysql dumps and sphinx config here if available###### cd sphinx-2.0.4-release/ apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev -y ./configure make make install cd /usr/local/etc/ cp /root/sphinx.conf sphinx.conf mkdir /var/data/ mkdir /var/data/sphinx/ mkdir /var/lib/mysql/ mkdir /var/run/mysqld/ chown -R mysql:mysql /var/run/mysqld/ mkdir /usr/share/mysql/ cd /usr/share/mysql/ wget http://fr.edis.at:8080/william/mysqldocs.zip unzip mysqldocs.zip && rm mysqldocs.zip chown -R mysql:mysql /var/lib/mysql/ cd /usr/ /usr/scripts/mysql_install_db /usr/bin/mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables & mysql -uroot -hIP mysql #update user set Password=PASSWORD('NEWPASS') WHERE User='root'; #flush privileges; for pid in $(ps aux | grep mysql | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'); do kill -9 $pid; done screen -S mysqld mysqld #CTRL+AD mysql -uroot -pNEWPASS mysql #CREATE USER 'USER'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'NEWPASS'; #CREATE USER 'USER'@'mysql' IDENTIFIED BY 'NEWPASS'; #CREATE USER 'USER'@'127.0.0.1' IDENTIFIED BY 'NEWPASS'; #CREATE USER 'USER'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'NEWPASS'; #create database predb; #GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'USER'@'%'; #GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'USER'@'mysql'; #GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'USER'@'127.0.0.1'; #GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON *.* TO 'USER'@'localhost'; #INSTALL PLUGIN sphinx SONAME 'ha_sphinx.so'; #flush privileges; cd /etc/init.d/ wget -O mysql-sphinx http://fr.edis.at:8080/william/mysqlinit wget -O searchd http://fr.edis.at:8080/william/searchdinit chmod +x mysql-sphinx chmod +x searchd mkdir /var/log/mysql mkdir /var/log/sphinx cd /root #IMPORT DB indexer --all --rotate searchd /usr/local/bin/indexer --rotate delta