Ubuntu 12.04 and SOLR 3.6 Install + TIKA

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS 64 bit Apache solr Tomcat 6 install with Tika and other JARS

We have chosen this particular Linux variant for it's long term support options for updates etc.

• Install base OS, 64 bit variant
• install tomcat6 + tomcat6-common + tomcat6-admin

sudo apt-get install tomcat6
sudo apt-get install tomcat6-admin

• Modify the admin configuration to allow a new login.

sudo service tomcat6 restart

• Check Tomcat works by visiting: http://localhost:8080
• Prepare the solr environment
• Create a temp folder for the solr binary

mkdir -p ~/tmp/solr/

• Navigate to that folder

cd ~/tmp/solr/

• download the latest Apache Lucene solr binary using WGET (you will need to get the latest URL for the version you wish to install)

wget http://apache.ziply.com/lucene/solr/3.6.0/apache-solr-3.6.0.tgz

• Decompress the binary file

tar xzvf apache-solr-3.6.0.tgz

• Create a folder for the main solr files (this is where the main SOLR config files are, not the expanded webapp)

sudo mkdir -p /var/solr 

• Copy the compressed solr webapp into the /var/solr folder

sudo cp apache-solr-3.6.0/dist/apache-solr-3.6.0.war /var/solr/solr.war

• copy the main solr files into /var/solr (you can either copy the default examples SOLR or multicore)

sudo cp -R apache-solr-3.6.0/example/solr/* /var/solr/

• Give the tomcat6 service owner rights to the /var/solr folder

sudo chown -R tomcat6 /var/solr/ 

• set the SOLR home environment variable (solr needs to know where its config is) and change JAVA memory allocations, set on a per webapp basis

sudo gedit /etc/init.d/tomcat6
JAVA_OPTS="$JAVA_OPTS -Dsolr.home=/var/solr -Xms1g -Xmx4g" 

• Restart tomcat6

sudo service tomcat6 restart

• Tell Tomcat catalina where to get everything and the solr webapp is extracted and run from:

/var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/solr/ 

echo -e '\n\n' | sudo tee -a /etc/tomcat6/Catalina/localhost/solr.xml
echo 'TOMCAT6_SECURITY=no' | sudo tee -a /etc/default/tomcat6

• As we need to index binary files such as Word and PDF we need to copy extra libraries from your extracted solr binary folders

cd ~/tmp/solr/

sudo cp apache-solr-3.6.1/contrib/extraction/lib/*.jar /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/solr/WEB-INF/lib/

sudo cp apache-solr-3.6.1/contrib/dataimporthandler/lib/*.jar /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/solr/WEB-INF/lib/

• Restart the server

sudo reboot

• We now need to test our solr installation
• First we must install the curl command to send binary files via http to the request handler

sudo apt-get install curl

• Create a text (non image) PDF file by creating a text file in Gedit and printing the result to the file test.pdf (save this in your /home/documents/ folder)
• Now we will take the test file and 'curl' it into solr

cd /home//Documents/

curl "http://localhost:8080/solr/update/extract?literal.id=smoketest&commit=true" -F "myfile=@test.pdf"

• If all goes well you should receive output similar to the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<response>
<lst name="responseHeader"><int name="status">0</int><int name="QTime">124</int></lst>
</response>

• Now test to see if you can search the index
• From a remote PC enter the following URL:

http://:8080/solr/admin

• In the query string box enter the following:

id:smoketest

• Press search
• If all works well the id will be discovered in the index and results similar to the following will be displayed:

<response>
<lst name="responseHeader">
<int name="status">0</int>
<int name="QTime">0</int>
<lst name="params">
<str name="indent">on</str>
<str name="start">0</str>
<str name="q">id:smoketest</str>
<str name="version">2.2</str>
<str name="rows">10</str>
</lst></lst>
<result name="response" numFound="1" start="0">
<doc>
<arr name="content_type">
<str>application/pdf</str>
</arr><str name="id">smoketest</str>
</doc>
</result>
</response>

• the 'numFound' variable shows 1 matching hit for 'smoketest' so we can confirm the system is working correctly
• Once the basic system is running it is time to apply the custom solr schema (if you have/need one). The schema resides in the following location:

/var/solr/conf/schema.xml