How to start Solr automatically?

Question

At the moment I have to go to /usr/java/apache-solr-1.4.0/example and then do:

java -jar start.jar

How do I get this to start

Answer 1

As you're on a shared Linux box, you'll have to ask the system administrator to do the following, probably.

Create a startup script in /etc/init.d/solr.

Copy this code, my Solr startup script, into that file:

#!/bin/sh

# Prerequisites:
# 1. Solr needs to be installed at /usr/local/solr/example
# 2. daemon needs to be installed
# 3. Script needs to be executed by root

# This script will launch Solr in a mode that will automatically respawn if it
# crashes. Output will be sent to /var/log/solr/solr.log. A PID file will be
# created in the standard location.

start () {
    echo -n "Starting solr..."

    # Start daemon
    daemon --chdir='/usr/local/solr/example' --command "java -jar start.jar" --respawn --output=/var/log/solr/solr.log --name=solr --verbose

    RETVAL=$?
    if [ $RETVAL = 0 ]
    then
        echo "done."
    else
        echo "failed. See error code for more information."
    fi
    return $RETVAL
}

stop () {
    # Stop daemon
    echo -n "Stopping solr..."

    daemon --stop --name=solr  --verbose
    RETVAL=$?

    if [ $RETVAL = 0 ]
    then
        echo "Done."
    else
        echo "Failed. See error code for more information."
    fi
    return $RETVAL
}


restart () {
    daemon --restart --name=solr  --verbose
}


status () {
    # Report on the status of the daemon
    daemon --running --verbose --name=solr
    return $?
}


case "$1" in
    start)
        start
    ;;
    status)
        status
    ;;
    stop)
        stop
    ;;
    restart)
        restart
    ;;
    *)
        echo $"Usage: solr {start|status|stop|restart}"
        exit 3
    ;;
esac

exit $RETVAL

Then run:

chkconfig --add solr

Or (on Ubuntu):

update-rc.d solr defaults

... or, if your Linux distribution doesn't have chkconfig (or update-rc.d), link /etc/init.d/solr to /etc/rc3.d/S99solr and /etc/rc5.d/S99solr and /etc/rc3.d/K01solr and /etc/rc5.d/K01solr:

% ln -s /etc/init.d/solr /etc/rc3.d/S99solr

% ln -s /etc/init.d/solr /etc/rc5.d/S99solr

% ln -s /etc/init.d/solr /etc/rc3.d/K01solr

% ln -s /etc/init.d/solr /etc/rc5.d/K01solr

Now on reboot Solr will startup in run levels 3 and 5 (console with network & full GUI).

To start solr manually run:

% /etc/init.d/solr start