Install

Solr is an open source enterprise search server based on the Lucene Java search library.

Download

Download solr-4.3.0.zip from http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/lucene/solr/

Prerequisites

Install Tomcat 7 (the only essential app is probably tomcat7):

sudo apt-get install tomcat7 tomcat7-admin tomcat7-common tomcat7-user

Create users (if you want to use the Tomcat admin):

sudo vim /etc/tomcat7/tomcat-users.xml

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<tomcat-users>
    <role rolename="admin"/>
    <role rolename="manager-gui"/>
    <user username="patrick.kimber" password="patrick" roles="admin,manager-gui"/>
</tomcat-users>

Install

Solr with Apache Tomcat:

Extract the archive:

cd ~/repo/temp/
unzip ~/Downloads/solr/solr-4.3.0.zip
cd solr-4.3.0/

Copy solr-4.3.0.war to a folder:

mkdir -p ~/repo/solr/war/
cp dist/solr-4.3.0.war ~/repo/solr/war/

Note: For Tomcat 5.5 and later, the war file must be stored outside of the webapps directory for this to work. Otherwise, the Context element is ignored.

Copy the example files, from the extracted archive to the repository folder:

cp -r example/multicore ~/repo/solr/

rm -r ~/repo/solr/example/example-DIH
rm -r ~/repo/solr/example/exampledocs
rm -r ~/repo/solr/example/solr-webapp

Change permissions:

sudo chgrp -R tomcat7 /home/patrick/repo/solr
sudo chmod -R 775 /home/patrick/repo/solr

Copy the logging files to Tomcat:

sudo cp example/lib/ext/* /var/lib/tomcat7/shared/
sudo cp example/resources/log4j.properties /var/lib/tomcat7/shared/

For information, the folder looks like this (after SOLR has been successfully started):

Create a context file:

sudo vim /var/lib/tomcat7/conf/Catalina/localhost/solr.xml

<Context docBase="/home/patrick/repo/solr/war/solr-4.3.0.war" debug="0" crossContext="true" unpackWAR="false" >
    <Environment name="solr/home" type="java.lang.String" value="/home/patrick/repo/solr/multicore" override="true" />
</Context>

Note:

  • We are using JNDI to configure SOLR…

  • If Tomcat cannot find the war file for any reason, it will delete the context file… (for a little bit more information see Tomcat WebApplication Context File).

  • I had several issues… so take a look at Issues to see how I solved them.

Test

http://localhost:8080/solr/ and http://localhost:8080/solr/admin/