I’m a big fan of Ferret as a low-headache, low barrier to entry search/indexing utility for Rails apps.
Recently though one of my servers kept seeing its disk usage spike to 100% unexplicably. I checked the usual suspects, log/ and tmp/ and found nothing.
Clueless, I reached out for a lil help from the pros. Hat tip Lourens for suggesting Ferret as a possible culprit.
When I nuked the index/ dir for the site UmmYeah—disk usage dropped from 100% to 33%! Woot.
... currently rebuilding the Ferret index. Let’s hope, when rebuilt from scratch, the bad boy is much more compact.
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I don’t think I know many people who associate Ferret with “low-headache”. I’ve been bitten enough times not to go near it.
Been using Sphinx and that has been much easier to deal with.
hey tim – I’m not in the business of defending Ferret, but I would say for a low-volume site it’s the easiest thing to get up & running, as well as keep up & running, over the long haul.
I’ve used Sphinx on a fancier site, and it is mighty slick.