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Table of Contents
Starting and Stopping Solr
Once VuFind is installed, it will only respond to search requests if its Solr back-end is active (unless, of course, you are relying on a third-party discovery service instead of a local index, in which case you can disregard this page entirely). This page explains how to turn Solr on and off and how to automate the process if you wish.
Starting Solr Manually
Linux Method
To start Solr under Linux, just switch to the directory where you installed VuFind (i.e. $VUFIND_HOME) and run this command:
./solr.sh start
Note: If this doesn't work, make sure that the solr.sh script has execute permissions:
chmod +x solr.sh
Prior to VuFind 3.0, solr.sh was named vufind.sh; be sure to use the command appropriate for your version.
Note: If you previously rebooted your system without manually stopping Solr, the script may mistakenly believe that it is still running. In this case, a manual restart should solve the problem.
Limit Warnings
Starting with Solr 7.3.1, you may see warnings on startup resembling:
*** [WARN] *** Your open file limit is currently 1024. It should be set to 65000 to avoid operational disruption. If you no longer wish to see this warning, set SOLR_ULIMIT_CHECKS to false in your profile or solr.in.sh *** [WARN] *** Your Max Processes Limit is currently 15058. It should be set to 65000 to avoid operational disruption. If you no longer wish to see this warning, set SOLR_ULIMIT_CHECKS to false in your profile or solr.in.sh
This is warning of some default settings that could impact the performance of your Solr instance. On some Linux platforms, this can be addressed by editing the /etc/security/limits.conf file and adding these lines:
username soft nproc 65000 username soft nofile 65000 username hard nproc 65000 username hard nofile 65000
(where “username” is the name of the user that will be running Solr).
It may be necessary to log out of your terminal session and log back in for these settings to take effect.
On Linux platforms using systemd, you may be able to work around the problem with a systemd file like this example (in a file like /etc/systemd/system/vufind.service):
Description=VuFind Starter After=network.target [Service] Type=forking ExecStart=/bin/sh -l -c '/usr/local/vufind/solr.sh start' -x PIDFile=/usr/local/vufind/solr/vendor/bin/solr-8983.pid User=vufind-user ExecStop=/bin/sh -l -c "/usr/local/vufind/solr.sh stop" -x SuccessExitStatus=0 LimitNOFILE=65000 LimitNPROC=65000 [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target
(Obviously the /usr/local/vufind path and the vufind-user username should be customized to reflect your local needs).
Once this is in place, you can use “sudo service vufind start” and “sudo service vufind stop” to start and stop the process, and appropriate limits will be applied.
Windows Method
VuFind includes a Windows batch file to run Solr. Just follow these steps:
- At a command prompt, switch to your VuFind directory.
- Type: solr start
Note that some of the scripting for this command is created automatically as part of the install.bat setup process. If you did not install VuFind using install.bat, the command may not work. You can re-run the install process to solve the problem.
Prior to VuFind 3.0, solr.bat was named vufind.bat; be sure to use the command appropriate for your version. Prior to VuFind 1.0RC2, Windows support was not included.
Stopping Solr Manually
Linux Method
To take the server offline, switch to the VuFind directory and type:
./solr.sh stop
Prior to VuFind 3.0, solr.sh was named vufind.sh; be sure to use the command appropriate for your version.
Windows Method
When using VuFind 3.0 or newer, you can stop Solr from the command line in Windows:
- At a command prompt, switch to your VuFind directory.
- Type: solr stop
In VuFind 2.x or earlier, to stop a manually-started Solr instance under Windows, open the command prompt window where the server is running and hit Ctrl-C. This will cause the process to shut down.
Restarting Solr Manually
Linux Method
Restarting Solr under Linux is much the same as starting it. Just switch to the VuFind directory and type:
./solr.sh restart
Prior to VuFind 3.0, solr.sh was named vufind.sh; be sure to use the command appropriate for your version.
Windows Method
When using VuFind 3.0 or newer, you can restart Solr from the command line in Windows:
- At a command prompt, switch to your VuFind directory.
- Type: solr restart
In VuFind 2.x and earlier, there is no graceful way to restart a manually-started Solr instance under Windows. Just follow the manual “stop” and “start” procedures described above.
Killing an Unresponsive Solr Process
Solr is usually very stable, especially if you restart it regularly. However, it will occasionally crash, especially if it does not have enough memory available (see the performance page for advice on memory tuning). When this happens, you may have to manually kill the crashed process.
Linux Method
First, use the ps command to get a list of running Java processes:
ps aux | grep java
You will see something like this:
dkatz 1326 0.3 4.3 1273128 173932 ? Sl 08:03 0:03 /usr/lib/jvm/default-java/bin/java -server -Xms1024m -Xmx1024m -XX:+UseParallelGC -XX:NewRatio=5 -Dsolr.solr.home=/usr/local/vufind/solr -Djetty.logs=/usr/local/vufind/solr/jetty/logs -Djetty.home=/usr/local/vufind/solr/jetty -jar /usr/local/vufind/solr/jetty/start.jar /usr/local/vufind/solr/jetty/etc/jetty.xml
The number after your username (“dkatz” in the example above) is the process ID. You can kill the process like this:
sudo kill -9 [process ID number]
If you repeat the ps command, you should no longer see Solr running.
Note that because you didn't stop Solr cleanly, the ./vufind.sh script may be confused the next time you try to start it up, thinking that Solr is already running. In this case, just perform a “./vufind.sh restart” instead of “./vufind.sh start” to get things back to normal.
Windows Method
[I have never experienced a Solr crash under Windows, but I imagine that Windows Task Manager can be used to clear up any problems. Does anyone with experience in this area care to comment? – Demian]
Running Solr Automatically
If you don't want to have to manually start and stop Solr every time you turn on or shut down your server, you can set it up to run automatically.
Linux (init.d) Method
You can set up Solr to run as a daemon. To do so, create a wrapper script in /etc/init.d/vufind:
Important: These instructions were written for VuFind 3.0 or later, when the Solr script was changed to solr.sh instead of vufind.sh; if running VuFind 2.x or earlier, you should replace “solr.sh” with “vufind.sh” in these examples.
If you need to run VuFind with non-default settings, you may wish to add some lines to export environment variables in this script, or else source a script containing all of your environment settings prior to running “solr.sh”. In many newer installations of VuFind, such a script is already set up as /etc/profile.d/vufind.sh.
Newer versions of Solr do not like to be run by the root user; you may need to either add “export SOLR_ADDITIONAL_START_OPTIONS=-force” to your script to force root permissions, or (preferably) set up your script to run Solr as a dedicated user (which can be done by wrapping the solr.sh command with “/bin/su - username -c …”).
#!/bin/sh ### BEGIN INIT INFO # Provides: vufind # Required-Start: # Required-Stop: # Default-Start: 2 3 4 5 # Default-Stop: 0 1 6 # Description: VuFind init script ### END INIT INFO cd /usr/local/vufind ./solr.sh $*
Note: The information in the INIT INFO block is only required for RedHat-style systems that use the chkconfig utility. You may need to adjust the start and stop runlevels depending on your system configuration.
Note: If your VuFind instance is installed somewhere other than /usr/local/vufind, be sure to adjust the cd line in the script accordingly.
Make sure that the script is executable (sudo may be needed on the command for some platforms):
chmod +x /etc/init.d/vufind
You will then need to add the script to your runlevel configuration (generally found under /etc/rc.d). The exact setup varies from flavor to flavor of Linux, but a bit of online research should help, as should these tools:
On RedHat (including Fedora): chkconfig --add vufind On Debian (including Ubuntu): update-rc.d vufind defaults
If this doesn't seem to work, be sure that VUFIND_HOME and JAVA_HOME are set in the profile of the user running the startup script.
Interacting with Solr After Automation
On some platforms, the “service” command is available to make use of startup scripts. In this case, you will be able to use it for Solr after completing configuration:
service vufind start service vufind stop service vufind restart service vufind check
(“sudo” may need to be prefixed to these commands depending on your Linux flavor and security configuration)
If service is available, it is the preferred way of starting and stopping Solr after automation.
Linux (systemd) Method
Thanks to jriedl for investigating this issue.
Some newer flavors of Linux (such as CentOS 7) use systemd instead of the traditional init.d approach.
To automate Solr with systemd:
- create the user “solr”, because Solr should not be run under root user.
- add permission for the solr directory to this user:
chown -R solr:solr /usr/local/vufind/solr
- create new file called /etc/systemd/system/vufind.service, with this code:
In VuFind 2.x, the contents of the file should be as follows:
Description=VuFind Starter After=network.target httpd.service mariadb.service [Service] Type=forking ExecStart=/bin/sh --login -c '/usr/local/vufind2/vufind.sh start' PIDFile=/var/run/vufind.pid User=solr ExecStop=/bin/sh --login -c "/usr/local/vufind2/vufind.sh stop" # Java responds to a SIGTERM by returning with exit code 143 which leads to "failed" exit in the systemd-Logs SuccessExitStatus=143 [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target
In VuFind 3.0 and later, the contents of the file should be as follows. It will work with the official VuFind 3 deb package (tested on Ubuntu 16.04).
After=network.target httpd.service mariadb.service [Service] Type=forking ExecStart=/bin/sh -l -c '/usr/local/vufind/solr.sh start' -x PIDFile=/usr/local/vufind/solr/vendor/bin/solr-8080.pid User=solr ExecStop=/bin/sh -l -c "/usr/local/vufind/solr.sh stop" -x SuccessExitStatus=0 [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target
Be sure to adjust paths in the code above to match your local system.
You can run
systemctl enable vufind
to automate the start-up of Solr on boot.
Interacting with Solr After Automation
Once configured with systemd, Solr can be managed using the systemctl command.
systemctl [enable, start, stop, status] vufind
Alternatively, you could investigate using the automation tools bundled with Solr 5+.
Windows Method
As of VuFind 3.0, Solr can be started as a background process from the command line, so it should be possible manage it from within Windows; however, detailed instructions and best practices have not been developed as of this writing. Please feel free to contribute your own recommendations!
Taking the User Interface Offline
If you simply stop the Solr server, users attempting to access your VuFind site will encounter error messages. If you are planning an outage, you can take the site more gracefully offline by adjusting the “available” setting in the “[System]” section of your config.ini file.