This post provides the tutorial to set up Apache Solr 6 on Ubuntu 16.04. (install Solr as a service that auto-starts when (re)boot Ubuntu.)
What is Apache Solr? Apache Solr is an open source enterprise-class search platform written in Java which enables you to create custom search engines that index databases, files, and websites. It has back end support for Apache Lucene. It can, for example, be used to search in multiple websites and can show recommendations for the searched content. Solr uses an XML (Extensible Markup Language) based query and result language. There are APIs (Applications program interfaces) available for Python, Ruby and JSON (Javascript Object Notation).
Some other features that Solr provides are:
- Full-Text Search.
- Snippet generation and highlighting.
- Custom Document ordering/ranking.
- Spell Suggestions.
This tutorial will show you how to install the latest Solr version on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. The steps will most likely work with later Ubuntu versions as well.
Before Solr 5, Solr doesn’t work alone; it needs a Java servlet container such as Tomcat or Jetty. But after Solr 5, it does not need to run on Tomcat.
Running Solr on Tomcat (No Longer Supported)
Beginning with Solr 5.0, Support for deploying Solr as a WAR in servlet containers like Tomcat is no longer supported.
For information on how to install Solr as a standalone server, please see Installing Solr.
To give an example:
Things need to do when installing Solr version before 6.
Download and install Tomcat (or some other servlet container)
Setup Tomcat as a service
Download and unpack Solr
Create a SOLR_HOME folder with correct content
copy solr.war into tomcat/webapps
set CATALINA_OPTS=“-Dsolr.solr.home=/path/to/home -Dsolr.x.y=z…. GC-flags etc”
Setup Tomcat as a service
service tomcat start
With Solr 6.x, we just need to do:
Download Solr and unpack the install-script
solr/bin/install_solr_service solr-6.2.0.tgz # Install
Tune /etc/default/solr.in.sh to your likings (mem, port, solr-home, Zk etc)
service solr start (or bin/solr start [options])
Your client would talk to Solr on typically http://host.name:8983/solr/ as a standalone server, not as one out of many webapps on 8080.
Apache Solr 6 required Java 8 or greater to run.
There had been lots of scaling improvements in Solr 6.
Now let’s get started with the installation.
Step 1: Update your System
Use a non-root sudo user to login into your Ubuntu server. Through this user, you will have to perform all the steps and use the Solr later.
To update your system, execute the following command to update your system with latest patches and updates.
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade -y #note that this will update your ubuntu OS, skip this if you do not want to update your system.
Step 2: Install Java
(Apache Solr 6 required Java 8 or greater to run. If you have installed Java 8 or greater on your machine, skip this.)
Solr is a Java application, so Java needs to be installed first in order to set up Solr. See my post for detailed Java 8 installation on Ubuntu 16.04.
Check the version of Java installed by running the following command
$ java -version
java version "1.8.0_131"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_131-b11)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.131-b11, mixed mode)
Step 3: (Manually) install Solr
Solr can be installed on Ubuntu in different ways, in this tutorial,we will install the latest package. (If you would like to install the latest package from the source, check out How to install and configure Solr 6 on Ubuntu 16.04.)
Now Let’s download the required Solr version from its official site or mirrors.
First go to this Solr Download page, click the link to the latest version.
You would probably see something looks like the pic shown below. Get the download link you prefer. (for my case, I used this one http://apache.cs.utah.edu/lucene/solr/6.5.1). Click the download link you selected, and then you would see something like the pic shown below.
#If you do not have sudo privilege
#cd /path to one folder under your account
# and you do not need to add "sudo" in the following commands
cd /opt
sudo wget http://apache.cs.utah.edu/lucene/solr/6.5.1/solr-6.5.1.tgz
Now extract solr service installer shell script from the downloaded Solr archive file and run installer using following commands.
sudo tar xzf solr-6.5.1.tgz solr-6.5.1/bin/install_solr_service.sh --strip-components=2
Then install Solr as a service using the script:
sudo ./install_solr_service.sh solr-6.5.1.tgz
The output will be similar to this: [Note that this installation will make Solr as a service that auto-starts when you (re)boot Ubuntu.]
myusername@myserver:/opt$ sudo ./install_solr_service.sh solr-6.5.1.tgz
id: ‘solr’: no such user
Creating new user: solr
Adding system user `solr’ (UID 117) …
Adding new group `solr’ (GID 126) …
Adding new user `solr’ (UID 117) with group `solr’ …
Creating home directory `/var/solr’ …
Extracting solr-6.5.1.tgz to /opt
Installing symlink /opt/solr -> /opt/solr-6.5.1 …
Installing /etc/init.d/solr script …
Installing /etc/default/solr.in.sh …
Service solr installed.
Customize Solr startup configuration in /etc/default/solr.in.sh
● solr.service – LSB: Controls Apache Solr as a Service
Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/solr; bad; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (exited) since Sun 2017-04-30 11:08:43 EDT; 5s ago
Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
Process: 2652 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/solr start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Apr 30 11:08:34 myserver systemd[1]: Starting LSB: Controls Apache Solr as a Service…
Apr 30 11:08:34 myserver su[2655]: Successful su for solr by root
Apr 30 11:08:34 myserver su[2655]: + ??? root:solr
Apr 30 11:08:34 myserver su[2655]: pam_unix(su:session): session opened for user solr by (uid=0)
Apr 30 11:08:42 myserver solr[2652]: [194B blob data]
Apr 30 11:08:42 myserver solr[2652]: Started Solr server on port 8983 (pid=2861). Happy searching!
Apr 30 11:08:43 myserver solr[2652]: [14B blob data]
Apr 30 11:08:43 myserver systemd[1]: Started LSB: Controls Apache Solr as a Service.
myusername@myserver:/opt$
Step 4: Start / Stop Solr Service
Use the following command to check the status of the service
$ sudo service solr status
See below for a sample output:
myusername@myserver:/opt$ sudo service solr status
● solr.service - LSB: Controls Apache Solr as a Service
Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/solr; bad; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (exited) since Sun 2017-04-30 11:08:43 EDT; 13min ago
Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
Process: 2652 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/solr start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Apr 30 11:08:34 myserver systemd[1]: Starting LSB: Controls Apache Solr as a Service...
Apr 30 11:08:34 myserver su[2655]: Successful su for solr by root
Apr 30 11:08:34 myserver su[2655]: + ??? root:solr
Apr 30 11:08:34 myserver su[2655]: pam_unix(su:session): session opened for user solr by (uid=0)
Apr 30 11:08:42 myserver solr[2652]: [194B blob data]
Apr 30 11:08:42 myserver solr[2652]: Started Solr server on port 8983 (pid=2861). Happy searching!
Apr 30 11:08:43 myserver solr[2652]: [14B blob data]
Apr 30 11:08:43 myserver systemd[1]: Started LSB: Controls Apache Solr as a Service.
Use the following commands to Start, Stop and check status of Solr service.
$ sudo service solr stop
$ sudo service solr start
$ sudo service solr status
Step 5: Creating a Solr search collection
(Before we create a Solr search collection, check out this post first if you want to change the default port 8983 to another port.)
Using Solr, we can create multiple collections. Run the following command, give the name of your collection (here mysolrcollection) and specify its configurations.
$ sudo su - solr -c "/opt/solr/bin/solr create -c mysolrcollection -n data_driven_schema_configs"
Sample output:
myusername@myserver:/opt$ sudo su - solr -c "/opt/solr/bin/solr create -c mysolrcollection -n data_driven_schema_configs"
[sudo] password for myusername:
Copying configuration to new core instance directory:
/var/solr/data/mysolrcollection
Creating new core 'mysolrcollection' using command:
http://localhost:8983/solr/admin/cores?action=CREATE&name=mysolrcollection&instanceDir=mysolrcollection
{
"responseHeader":{
"status":0,
"QTime":1422},
"core":"mysolrcollection"}
The new core directory for our first collection has been created. To view the default schema file, got to:
cd /opt/solr/server/solr/configsets/data_driven_schema_configs/conf
You will see some files shown in the picture below.
To view other configuration options , got to:
cd /opt/solr/server/solr/configsets/
Step 6: Use the Solr Web Interface (i.e., Access Solr Admin Panel)
Default Solr runs on port 8983. You can access Solr port in your web browser and you will get Solr dashboard.
The Apache Solr is now accessible on the default port, which is 8983. The admin UI should be accessible at http://your_server_ip:8983/solr. The port should be allowed by your firewall to run the links.
(If you do not know your IP, check my post to find it out.)
For example:
http://192.168.1.100:8983/solr/
Or use your machine’s host name if you have one.
http://example.org:8983/solr/
Here you can view statics of created collection in previous steps named “mycollection”. Click on “Core Selector” on left sidebar and select created collection.
To see the details of the first collection that we created earlier, select the “mysolrcollection” collection in the left menu.
After you selected the “mysolrcollection” collection, select Documents in the left menu. There you can enter real data in JSON format that will be searchable by Solr. To add more data, copy and paste the following example JSON onto Document field:
{
"id": 1,
"name":"John",
"age":30,
"cars":[ "Ford", "BMW", "Fiat" ]
}
Note: You can add other formats of data such as CSV etc to Solr. (See the pic below)
Click on the submit document button after adding the data.
Status: success
Response:
{
"responseHeader": {
"status": 0,
"QTime": 758
}
}
Now we can click on Query on the left side then click on Execute Query,
We will see something like this:
Conclusion
After successfully installing the Solr Web Interface on Ubuntu, you can now insert the data or query the data with the Solr API and Web Interface.
You can write code to add a large set of documents into Solr. See my post for using Solr with Python. See this post for some useful Solr resources I collected.
References:
Install Tomcat & Solr (You can’t avoid this one) – This is for Solr before version 5, after Solr 5, Tomcat is not required to install Solr.
Apache Solr Reference Guide/ Installing Solr & Running Solr & Solr Quick Start (pdf. a very good concise intro, including some basic usages and indexing xml, json, csv files)
Configuring a schema.xml for Solr
First, rename the /opt/solr/solr/collection1 to an understandable name like apples (use whatever name you’d like). (This can be skipped if you installed it using apt-get. In that case, you can execute the following command instead: cd /usr/share/solr):
cd /opt/solr/solr
mv collection1 apples
cd apples
Also, if you installed Solr manually, open the file core.properties (nano core.properties) and change the name to the same name.
Then, remove the data directory and change the schema.xml:
rm -R data
nano conf/schema.xml
Paste your own schema.xml in here.
