Technical documentation for ArchivesSpace
For ArchivesSpace > 3.1.1 this is required. For previous versions it is optional.
ArchivesSpace “officially” supports the version indicated in solrconfig.xml. That refers to a version that is used for development and tested between release cycles.
If you are already running Solr externally using a configuration derived from a 3.1.1 or
earlier ArchivesSpace then it should continue to work, as for the transition from embedded
to external Solr the configuration files have only been updated to resolve deprecations.
To support a custom set of Solr configuration files (i.e. not the exact files provided
with an ArchivesSpace release), however, you must set AppConfig[:solr_verify_checksums] = false in config.rb.
Alternatively if you would like to use the verify checksums feature you can place a copy of your
schema and solrconfig xml files in the ArchivesSpace release solr directory, overwriting those
provided by ArchivesSpace.
Note: the ArchivesSpace Program Team can only provide support for Solr deployments using the “officially” supported version with the standard configuration provided by the application. Everything else will be treated as “best effort” community-led support.
Refer to the Solr documentation for instructions on setting up Solr on your server.
You will download the Solr package and extract it to a folder of your choosing. Do not start Solr until you have added the ArchivesSpace configuration files.
We strongly recommend a standalone mode installation. No support will be provided for Solr Cloud deployments specifically (i.e. we cannot help troubleshoot Zookeeper).
Before running Solr you will need to setup a configset.
Using the command line:
mkdir -p /$path/$to/$solr/server/solr/configsets/archivesspace/conf
Be sure to replace /$path/$to/$solr with your actual Solr location, which might be something like:
mkdir -p /opt/solr/server/solr/configsets/archivesspace/conf
Right click on your Solr directory and open in Windows Terminal (Powershell).
mkdir -p .\server\solr\configsets\archivesspace\conf
You should see something like this in response:
Directory: C:\Users\archivesspace\Projects\solr-8.10.1\server\solr\configsets\archivesspace
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
---- ------------- ------ ----
d----- 10/25/2021 12:15 PM conf
Copy the ArchivesSpace Solr configuration files from the solr directory included
with the release into the $SOLR_HOME/server/solr/configsets/archivesspace/conf directory.
There should be four files:
ls .\server\solr\configsets\archivesspace\conf\
Directory: C:\Users\archivesspace\Projects\solr-8.10.1\server\solr\configsets\archivesspace\conf
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name
---- ------------- ------ ----
-a---- 10/25/2021 12:18 PM 18291 schema.xml
-a---- 10/25/2021 12:18 PM 3046 solrconfig.xml
-a---- 10/25/2021 12:18 PM 0 stopwords.txt
-a---- 10/25/2021 12:18 PM 0 synonyms.txt
Note: your exact output may be slightly different.
With the configset in place run the command to create an ArchivesSpace core:
bin/solr start
Wait for Solr to start (running as a non-admin user):
.\bin\solr start
"java version info is 11.0.12"
"Extracted major version is 11"
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM warning: JVM cannot use large page memory because it does not have enough privilege to lock pages in memory.
Waiting up to 30 to see Solr running on port 8983
Started Solr server on port 8983. Happy searching!
You can check that Solr is running on http://localhost:8983.
Now create the core:
bin/solr create -c archivesspace -d archivesspace
You should see confirmation:
"java version info is 11.0.12"
"Extracted major version is 11"
Created new core 'archivesspace'
In the browser you should be able to access the ArchivesSpace schema.
Edit the ArchivesSpace config.rb file:
AppConfig[:enable_solr] = false
Note that doing this means that you will have to backup Solr manually.
This config setting should point to your Solr instance:
AppConfig[:solr_url] = "http://localhost:8983/solr/archivesspace"
If you are not running ArchivesSpace and Solr on the same server, update
localhost to your Solr address.
By default, on startup, ArchivesSpace will check that the Solr configuration
appears to be correct and will raise an error if not. You can disable this check
by setting AppConfig[:solr_verify_checksums] = false in config.rb.
Please note: if you’re upgrading an existing installation of ArchivesSpace to use an external Solr, you will need to trigger a full re-index. Instructions for this are in Indexes .
You can now follow the instructions in the Getting started section to start your ArchivesSpace application.