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Solr fails to initialize

Perform the following when Solr fails to initialize.

Problem

This problem can be manifested in three different ways:
  • An error in a crawler.log file.

    HTTP ERROR 503

    The complete error looks similar to this:

    19 Feb 2016 13:14:56,515 [pool-4-thread-1] ERROR (CaIndexer.java [run]:201) - 
    threadId=18: database=PLAY idpath=/#1/#2/#1456/#1457/#1464/#1473/#1475: Exception: Expected mime 
    type application/octet-stream but got text/html. <html>
    <head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
    <title>Error 503 Server is shutting down or failed to initialize</title>
    </head>
    <body><h2>HTTP ERROR 503</h2>
    <p>Problem accessing /solr/collectionPLAY/update. Reason:
    <pre>    Server is shutting down or failed to initialize</pre></p><hr /><i><small>Powered by 
    Jetty://</small></i>
    <br/>                                                
    <br/>
    
  • An error in the <Contenta_Home>\Tools\Solr\example\logs\solr.log file.
    ERROR - 2016-02-19 13:06:12.008; org.apache.solr.common.SolrException; 
    null:org.apache.solr.common.SolrException: Found multiple cores with the name [collectionPLAY], 
    with instancedirs [C:\PROGRA~2\XYENTE~1\Contenta\Tools\Solr\example\solr\collectionPLAY\] and 
    [C:\PROGRA~2\XYENTE~1\Contenta\Tools\Solr\example\solr\collectionPLAY_old\]

  • An error in the Solr dashboard when accessed from a browser using the URL http://<machine_name>:<port>/solr/#/

Solution

The described errors arise when a user makes a copy of an existing collection but does not update the core.properties file in the new collection directory. The name field of the file must be set to a unique value, which, by convention, is the name of the collection folder.

Example:

  1. Go to <Contenta_Home>\Tools\Solr\example\solr.
  2. Create a copy of collectionSDL_Contenta_Sample folder and paste it into the same directory.
  3. Open collectionSDL_Contenta_Sample_Copy\core.properties file.
  4. Change
    "name=collectionSDL_Contenta_Sample"
    to
    "name=collectionSDL_Contenta_Sample_Copy"