How to install and run Apache Solr on FreeBSD

Before you begin this guide, you should have a FreeBSD 10.1 server.

Solr needs the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version 1.8 or higher.

You can install it with commands:

# cd /usr/ports/java/openjdk8
# make install clean

This OpenJDK implementation requires a few file systems to be mounted for full functionality. Run these commands to perform the required mounts immediately:

    mount -t fdescfs fdesc /dev/fd
    mount -t procfs proc /proc

To make it permanent, you need the following lines in /etc/fstab:

    fdesc    /dev/fd        fdescfs        rw    0    0
    proc    /proc        procfs        rw    0    0

Now you can check your Java version like this:

# java -version
openjdk version "1.8.0_152"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_152-b16)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.152-b16, mixed mode)

Now you can install Apache Solr with commands:

# cd /usr/ports/textproc/apache-solr
# make install clean

Make sure to edit the following files to adapt to your setup:

/usr/local/etc/solr.in.sh
/var/db/solr/solr.xml
/var/db/solr/log4j.properties

All files are configured to have your solr instances running in

/var/db/solr/<instancename>

For more information how to configure solr check the manual.

The port is configured to listen only on localhost, port 8983.

To have a working initial config, use:

# cp -R /usr/local/solr/example/example-DIH/solr/solr /var/db/solr/
# chown -R www /var/db/solr/solr

To rotate solr log files include /var/log/solr/ to your log rotation
configuration.

To enable the port execute:

sysrc solr_enable="YES"

And start it with:

# service solr start