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SOLR-INSTALL.md

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Solr Installation for Checkbook NYC

Checkbook NYC runs Solr inside Tomcat, and comes with both of them pre-packaged for direct installation by copying, as described below.

  1. Copy the Solr and Tomcat directories to the right places.

       $ sudo cp -a software/solr-4.1.0 /opt/solr-4.1.0
   $ sudo cp -a software/apache-tomcat-6.0.35 /opt/apache-tomcat-6.0.35

Note: you may need to create the /opt directory first on some systems.

  1. Create the Tomcat log directory.

       $ sudo mkdir /opt/apache-tomcat-6.0.35/logs

Note: as the above implies, Tomcat will be running as root and writing to its log directory as root. This is not ideal; probably Tomcat should run as www-data. However, we have not tested that configuration yet, so for now we are documenting running as root.

  1. Ensure that Solr will be able to connect to the PostgreSQL DB.

       $ sudo -u postgres psql -c "ALTER USER postgres WITH PASSWORD 'postgres';"

Note: Hmm, this step does not really belong in the Solr installation instructions. It's really about setting the postgres DB user's password, and therefore should be documented in INSTALL.md.

  1. Set the PostgreSQL connection authentication configuration:

Open up the PostgreSQL configuration file (a file somewhere like /etc/postgresql/9.1/main/pg_hba.conf if Ubuntu 12.04 or /var/lib/pgsql/9.3/data/pg_hba.conf if CentOS 6.4) and change

      `local  all        postgres          peer`

to this:

      `local  all        postgres          md5`

Note: If there is no local all postgres peer line, but there is a local all all peer, then leave that line in place and simply precede it with a new local all postgres md5 line. The third value in the line is the user, and PostgreSQL's rule is to accept the first matching line, so by putting that line first, the md5 authentication method will be used for the postgres user while peer will continue to be used for all other users.

Note: Again, that "postgres" user is the main PG database user, and changing its authentication mechanism could affect up other things. The long-term solution is for Checkbook to have its own PG user.

Then restart PostgreSQL:

      $ sudo service postgresql restart

Now PostgreSQL can accept password authentication. You can use this command to test that it worked:

      $ PGPASSWORD=postgres psql -U postgres checkbook

The expected result is something like this:

      psql (9.1.9)
      Type "help" for help.
      checkbook=# \q  (to quit)
  1. Tell Solr how to connect to PostgreSQL:

Edit /opt/solr-4.1.0/indexes/solr/collection1/conf/db-config.xml to insert the correct database details. There is no line break or backslash here; the backslash just indicates line continuation:

      url="jdbc:postgresql://localhost/checkbook" \
      user="postgres" password="postgres"

Note: Actually, you may not need to edit it if you're just testing, as the shipped file has the username "postgres" with password "postgres", for testing. However, in a production environment those would be different, and this is where you would need to set them.

  1. Start Solr inside Tomcat:

To run Tomcat, you'll need a Java runtime environment. If your system doesn't already have one, you can install it like this under Ubuntu 12.04:

      $ sudo apt-get update
      $ sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jre-headless

Now that Java is installed, start up Tomcat:

      $ cd /opt/apache-tomcat-6.0.35/bin
      $ sudo ./startup.sh

That starts up Tomcat, and Solr within Tomcat. Visit http://localhost:8080/solr-checkbook/ in a browser to verify that Solr is now running. For troubleshooting errors, see the detailed logs in /opt/apache-tomcat-6.0.35/logs/.

  1. Start Solr indexing.

Visit this url in a browser start indexing: http://localhost:8080/solr-checkbook/dataimport?command=full-import&clean=true&jobID=0

You can monitor the progress of indexing by repeatedly visiting http://localhost:8080/solr-checkbook/dataimport.

Detailed logs for troubleshooting errors can be found at </opt/apache-tomcat-6.0.35/logs/>.

Note: You may need to open up the server's firewall to enable a web browser to reach port 8080. Firewall configuration varies widely from system to system, so we cannot document all the possibilities here, but if it's iptables, then iptables -F should flush all existing firewall rules. You probably wouldn't want to do that on a production server, but that approach might make sense for a test instance, especially one running in a virtual machine.