Install Apache Solr 5.x for a Drupal Website on Ubuntu

To install Apache Solr and run it with a Drupal website on an Ubuntu server. Follow these steps:

Install Java

You need to make sure you have Java installed.
To check run this command:

java -version

If it's not installed, simply install from packages:

sudo apt-get -y install openjdk-7-jdk jetty

 

Install Latest Apache Solr 5.x

Download the latest zip file release 5.x.x from http://mirror.cc.columbia.edu/pub/software/apache/lucene/solr/

Unzip the downloading: 

unzip solr-5-x-x.zip;

More the unzipped folder to where is should be:

sudo mv solr-5-x-x /usr/local/solr
cd /usr/local/solr

 

Configuring Apache Solr for your Drupal site

Make a copy of the Solr core to be used for Drupal sites

cp -r example/ drupal/

Create cores for your sites. Every core is an instance of a Drupal site:

cd drupal/multicore
sudo cp -r core0 MYSITENAME

Edit the solr.xml to add your new core:

sudo vim solr.xml

and add a new core similar to:

<core name="My Site Name" instanceDir="MYSITENAME" />

 

Replace the default Solr configuration with the Drupal  Solr configuration provided from the Search API Solr Search module.

sudo rm -r MYSITENAME/conf
sudo cp -r /PATH/TO/DRUPAL/sites/all/modules/contrib/search_api_solr/solr-conf/5.x /usr/local/solr/drupal/multicore/conf/MYSITENAME/conf

 

Start Solr

cd .. 
java -Dsolr.solr.home=multicore -jar start.jar

 

Create Solr user

sudo useradd -d /usr/local/solr -M -s /usr/sbin/nologin solr 
sudo chown -R solr:root /usr/local/solr

 

Add Solr as a Service

Download the init.d script to start Apache Solr. Thanks to 2bits.

wget http://2bits.com/sites/2bits.com/files/solr-init.d.sh_.txt
sudo mv solr-init.d.sh_.txt /etc/init.d/solr

Edit the file to suit your environment and change the SOLR_HOME=/opt/solr/example environment variable (line 18) to /usr/local/solr/drupal

sudo vim /etc/init.d/solr

Replace line 18 to be:

SOLR_HOME=/usr/local/solr/drupal

 

Make the service to work properly:

sudo chmod a+rx /etc/init.d/solr
sudo update-rc.d solr defaults

 

Access Solr

Your Solr URL will be: http://localhost:8983/solr/#

If you want to setup authentication for Solr, please follow: http://2bits.com/articles/configuring-apache-solr-4x-drupal-password-au…