Step by step guide to setup Apache Solr 5.x in CentOS 7 for Drupal 7 Panopoly distro using Search API

As of this writing, the latest version of Solr is 5.5.5. In this step by step guide we will install that version and integrate it with Drupal 7 Panopoly distro site using Search API module. Actually, Panopoly distro is already shipped with Search API and Search API Solr Search modules. All we need to do is to configure the pre-setup Search API Solr server and index. The good thing about using Search API is that it is already integrated with Views module and we can do unlimited customization with our search results.

The Solr version 5.x is now a stand alone server, it already comes with Java web server. If we look at Solr version 4.x and below, they need to install Tomcat or Jetty in order to run as a server. Our installation in version 5.x will be much easy. The following instructions are tested running on my Linode server running Centos 7 64-bit Linux distro.

Install Java

Solr is a Java application and in order to run it we need to install Java in our system.

1. First we check out if Java is already installed in our machine by issuing the following command:

   
   which java
   
   

2. If Java is not installed, check the available versions of Java and install it:

   
   yum list available java*
   yum install java-1.8.0-openjdk.x86_64
   
   

3. Then verify if it is already installed:

   
   which java
   java -version
   
   

Seup Solr server

1. Solr require system user named "solr" and we will create one:

   
   adduser solr
   
   

2. Download and setup Solr server:

   
   cd /opt
   curl -O http://www.trieuvan.com/apache/lucene/solr/5.5.5/solr-5.5.5.tgz
   tar zxvf solr-5.5.5.tgz
   cp /opt/solr-5.5.5/bin/install_solr_service.sh .
   rm -rf solr-5.5.5
   ./install_solr_service.sh solr-5.5.5.tgz
   
   

3. Make the Solr server auto-run when the machine reboot or shutdown:

   
   chkconfig --add solr
   chkconfig | grep solr
   
   

Create Solr core:

Solr core is a running Lucene index instance with the Solr configuration. It is ideal to create one for each Drupal site (if  you are running multi-site).

1. Create Solr core instance named "webfoobar":

   
   cd /opt/solr/bin
   sudo ./solr create -c webfoobar
   
   

2. Change ownership to "solr" user:

   
   sudo chown -R solr:solr /var/solr/
   
   

3. If you get this error:

   "Failed to create core 'webfoobar' due to: Error CREATEing SolrCore 'webfoobar': Unable to create core [webfoobar] Caused by: /var/solr/data/webfoobar/data"

   Issue this command again:

   
   sudo ./solr create -c webfoobar
   
   

4. Download search_api_solr module, untar and copy the Drupal specific Solr 5.x core configurations to overwrite the existing configuration files in the created core instance:

   
   curl -O http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/search_api_solr-7.x-1.8.tar.gz
   tar zxvf search_api_solr-7.x-1.8.tar.gz
   cp search_api_solr/solr-conf/5.x/* /var/solr/data/webfoobar/conf
   sudo chown -R solr:solr /var/solr/data/webfoobar
   rm -rf search_api_solr-7.x-1.8.tar.gz search_api_solr
   
   

5. Add your server's IP address to whitelist as well as your personal computer's network IP address (in able to access the Solr admin web interface http://www.mywebsite.com:8983/solr or follow this guide for alternative way of setup). Wrap the item '<New id="Contexts" class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ContextHandlerCollection"/>' with an IPAccessHandler:

   
   vi /opt/solr/server/etc/jetty.xml
   
   

   ... search and replace the '<New id="Contexts" class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ContextHandlerCollection"/>' with these lines:

   
   <!-- here begins ip securing -->
   <New class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.IPAccessHandler">
     <Call name="addWhite">
       <!-- list of args with ip-addresses -->
       <Arg>127.0.0.1</Arg>
     </Call>
     <Call name="addWhite">
       <!-- list of args with ip-addresses -->
       <Arg>xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx</Arg>
     </Call>
     <Set name="handler">
       <New id="Contexts" class="org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.ContextHandlerCollection"/>
     </Set>
   </New>
   <!-- end of securing -->
   
   

   Note: replace the xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx with your personal computer's network IP address

6. Start the Solr server:

   
   systemctl start solr.service
   
   

   To create more Solr core instance, just repeat the steps above.

Install Drupal 7 Panopoly

We will use "drush" on the following steps to install Panopoly.

1. Download Drupal 7 Panopoly distro to your web directory (in my case its "/home/webfoobar/public_html") and install it:

   
   cd /home/webfoobar/public_html
   drush dl panopoly
   mv panopoly-7.x-1.23/{.,}* .
   rm -rf panopoly-7.x-1.23
   drush si panopoly --account-name=admin --account-pass=password --db-url=mysql://admin:password@localhost/mydatabase
   
   

   Note: Ignore the errors. Those errors will not prevent us from running our Drupal site.

2. Login to your newly installed Drupal as admin then go to http://yoursite.com/admin/config/search/search_api/server/solr_server/edit and tick the "Enabled" field, change the "Solr host" field value to 127.0.0.1 and "Solr path" field to /solr/webfoobar (the webfoobar corresponds to the name of the Solr core created earlier) then click "Save settings" button:

   You should see something like this:
   

3. Lastly, enable the Solr Index by going to http://yoursite.com/admin/config/search/search_api/index/node_index/edit tick the "Enabled" checkbox, select "Solr Server" from the "Server" field and click "Save settings" button:
   

Congratulations! you have now Drupal 7 Panopoly powered with Solr 5.x.