Using multi-core features

Written by Ester Heylen, 09/11/2009 Updated 12/14/2009 by Ester Heylen

As mentioned before, you are able to set up a single Solr instance, the backend engine of eZ Find, to serve multiple sites (it does not even matter if these are on the same box). Similar to a database, Solr is capable of having multiple search indexes from one servlet, because Solr supports the concepts of multiple "cores". This means that it can run multiple instances of itself inside a servlet container. Each core has its own set of configuration files (including the "schema") and dedicated directories.

Lets go through the steps of setting up a Solr instance which must serve two sites. To keep it simple we'll call them ezlabs .no and ez.no.

The easiest way is to first prepare a central location for the Solr Index. This can for example be:
```
/srv/solr
```
Next you should create two additional directories inside it, as follows:
```
/srv/solr/java
/srv/solr/cores
```
Inside /srv/solr/java you should store a copy of the contents of the java directory of your eZ Find installation, or if you don't have one yet, download it from http://ez.no/ezfind .
Next create a symlink for the solr/lib plugin directory inside /srv/solr/cores like this:
```
ln -s /srv/solr/java/solr/lib /srv/solr/cores
```
Create additional directories for each of your sites, called ezlabs and ez in your /srv/solr/cores. Both of them must contain a data and a conf subdirectory.
Your file structure should look something like this:
```
/srv/solr/cores
       ezlabsno/data
       ezlabsno/conf

       ezno/data
       ezno/conf
```
In both conf directories you must then copy the contents of the folder extension/ezfind/java/solr/conf/* and adapt the Solr dataDir.

Next create a solr.xml file inside /srv/solr/cores/solr.xml with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!-- snip the comments from Apache wiki -->
<solr persistent="true" sharedLib="lib">
    <cores adminPath="/admin/cores">
         <core name="ezlabsno" instanceDir="ezlabsno" />
         <core name="ezno" instanceDir="ezno" />
    </cores>
</solr>

If you already have indexed data for one or both of your sites, you may stop Solr from indexing them again. You should then copy the index and spellchecker directories to your data directories (in /srv/solr/cores/ezlabsno/data and /srv/solr/cores/ezno/data).

Now you should restart Solr with the following parameters:

cd /srv/solr/java; java -Dsolr.solr.home=/srv/solr/cores -jar start.jar

It's important to keep an eye on the output, in case of potential errors (for example things that are permission related).
And finally you can configure the individual Exponential and eZ Find instances with the dedicated URLs as base URLs in solr.ini:

http://localhost:8983/solr/ezlabsno

http://localhost:8983/solr/ezno

Contributors

Ester Heylen Author 09/11/2009 Updated 12/14/2009
Francesco Commenter 11/24/2009
chs Commenter 12/10/2009
Michael Maclean Commenter 12/14/2009
Jason Calhoun Commenter 02/14/2010

Comments (6 historical)

Written by readers of the earlier documentation sites, kept as they were.

something missing?

Francesco · 11/24/2009 05:23 pm

I guess something is missing after "Now you should restart Solr with the following parameters as follows:"
isn't it?
yes... not working

Francesco · 11/24/2009 07:32 pm
The above advices are not complete, as I said before.
(I've spent 3hr already on this.... geee!)
there is sure another mistake
```
instanceDir="siteoneno "
```
should be
```
instanceDir="siteoneno"
```
without the blank space at the end, isn't it?
(see http://wiki.apache.org/solr/CoreAdmin )

still not working

Francesco · 11/28/2009 06:59 pm

Thank you for the updates.
It still does not work for us (while it works with single solr).
We get this error (with our server is Debian lenny)

28-nov-2009 19.39.38 org.apache.solr.request.XSLTResponseWriter init
INFO: xsltCacheLifetimeSeconds=5
28-nov-2009 19.39.38 org.apache.solr.core.RequestHandlers initHandlersFromConfig
INFO: created standard: solr.SearchHandler
28-nov-2009 19.39.38 org.apache.solr.core.RequestHandlers initHandlersFromConfig
INFO: created dismax: solr.SearchHandler
28-nov-2009 19.39.38 org.apache.solr.core.RequestHandlers initHandlersFromConfig
INFO: created partitioned: solr.SearchHandler
28-nov-2009 19.39.38 org.apache.solr.core.RequestHandlers initHandlersFromConfig
INFO: created exponential: solr.DisMaxRequestHandler
28-nov-2009 19.39.38 org.apache.solr.common.SolrException log
GRAVE: org.apache.solr.common.SolrException: Error loading class 'org.ezsystems.solr.handler.ezfind.eZFindRequestHandler'
	at org.apache.solr.core.SolrResourceLoader.findClass(SolrResourceLoader.java:310)
	at org.apache.solr.core.SolrCore.createInstance(SolrCore.java:411)
	at org.apache.solr.core.SolrCore.createRequestHandler(SolrCore.java:436)
	at org.apache.solr.core.RequestHandlers.initHandlersFromConfig(RequestHandlers.java:150)
	at org.apache.solr.core.SolrCore.<init>(SolrCore.java:541)
	at org.apache.solr.core.CoreContainer.create(CoreContainer.java:425)
	at org.apache.solr.core.CoreContainer.load(CoreContainer.java:278)
	at org.apache.solr.core.CoreContainer$Initializer.initialize(CoreContainer.java:117)
	at org.apache.solr.servlet.SolrDispatchFilter.init(SolrDispatchFilter.java:83)
	at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.FilterHolder.doStart(FilterHolder.java:99)
	at org.mortbay.component.AbstractLifeCycle.start(AbstractLifeCycle.java:40)
	at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler.initialize(ServletHandler.java:594)
	at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.Context.startContext(Context.java:139)
	at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext.startContext(WebAppContext.java:1218)
	at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.ContextHandler.doStart(ContextHandler.java:500)
	at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext.doStart(WebAppContext.java:448)
	at org.mortbay.component.AbstractLifeCycle.start(AbstractLifeCycle.java:40)
	at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerCollection.doStart(HandlerCollection.java:147)
	at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.ContextHandlerCollection.doStart(ContextHandlerCollection.java:161)
	at org.mortbay.component.AbstractLifeCycle.start(AbstractLifeCycle.java:40)
	at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerCollection.doStart(HandlerCollection.java:147)
	at org.mortbay.component.AbstractLifeCycle.start(AbstractLifeCycle.java:40)
	at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerWrapper.doStart(HandlerWrapper.java:117)
	at org.mortbay.jetty.Server.doStart(Server.java:210)
	at org.mortbay.component.AbstractLifeCycle.start(AbstractLifeCycle.java:40)
	at org.mortbay.xml.XmlConfiguration.main(XmlConfiguration.java:929)
	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
	at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
	at org.mortbay.start.Main.invokeMain(Main.java:183)
	at org.mortbay.start.Main.start(Main.java:497)
	at org.mortbay.start.Main.main(Main.java:115)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.ezsystems.solr.handler.ezfind.eZFindRequestHandler
	at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(Unknown Source)
	at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
	at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(Unknown Source)
	at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppClassLoader.loadClass(WebAppClassLoader.java:375)
	at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppClassLoader.loadClass(WebAppClassLoader.java:337)
	at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(Unknown Source)
	at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method)
	at java.lang.Class.forName(Unknown Source)
	at org.apache.solr.core.SolrResourceLoader.findClass(SolrResourceLoader.java:294)
	... 32 more

while trying to surf in http://localhost... we get "severe SOLR configuration error"
:(
We do really need to have solr working for several ez websites
Thank you for your help,
Fra

Re: still not working

chs · 12/10/2009 11:13 am

I can't say if this is the same problem but I just got the same error (GRAVE: org.apache.solr.common.SolrException: Error loading class 'org.ezsystems.solr.handler.ezfind.eZFindRequestHandler).
The directory extension/ezfind/java/solr/lib/ was missing and, with it, the file ezsystems-ezfind-solr-extension-2.1.jar.
I kinda messed up using SVN to transfer eZFind from one box to another.
mes deux centimes de franc ...

Typo in solr.xml

Michael Maclean · 12/14/2009 04:02 pm

It seems that the line which says:
<solr persistent="true" shareLib="lib">
has a typo. I've had much more success using
<solr persistent="true" sharedLib="lib">
(shared, not share)
My Multi-Core Woes [RESOLVED]

Jason Calhoun · 02/14/2010 12:02 am

I was able to get mult-core installed with the instructions above. But the search did not work for my sites. My check list looked like this.
Solr running: OK,
Solr Administration Pages working: OK,
Index with updatesearchindexsolr.php: OK,?
Synchronize from site_admin: FAILED,
Search results from site: FAILED,
[SOLUTION]
Make a change to each sites extension/ezfind/settings/solr.ini . add /<corename> to the end of each SearchServerURI like below:
[SolrBase]
# Base URI of the Solr server
SearchServerURI=http://localhost:8983/solr/site1
You must then re-index each site with php extension/ezfind/bin/php/updatesearchindexsolr.php -s site_admin

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