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Recreating indexes

There are two strategies for reindexing ArchivesSpace:

  • soft reindex
  • full reindex

Soft reindex

A soft reindex updates the existing documents in Solr without directly touching the actual index documents on the filesystem. This can be done while the system is running and is suitable for most use cases.

There are two common ways to perform a soft reindex:

  1. Delete indexer state files

ArchivesSpace keeps track of what has been indexed by using the files under data/indexer_state and data/indexer_pui_state (for the PUI).

If these files are missing, the indexer assumes that nothing has been indexed and reindexes everything. To force ArchivesSpace to reindex all records, just delete the files in /path/to/archivesspace/data/indexer_state and /path/to/archivesspace/data/indexer_pui_state.

You also can do this selectively by record type, for example, to reindex accessions in repository 2 delete the file called 2_accession.dat.

  1. Bump system_mtime values in the database

If you update a record’s system_mtime it becomes eligible for reindexing.

#reindex all resources
UPDATE resource SET system_mtime = NOW();
#reindex resource 1
UPDATE resource SET system_mtime = NOW() WHERE id = 1;

Full reindex

A full reindex is a complete rebuild of the index from the database. This may be required if you are having indexer issues, in the case of index corruption, or if called for by an upgrade owing to changes in ArchivesSpace’s Solr configuration.

To perform a full reindex:

ArchivesSpace <= 3.1.0 (embedded Solr)

  • Shutdown ArchivesSpace
  • Delete these directories:
    • rm -rf /path/to/archivesspace/data/indexer_state/
    • rm -rf /path/to/archivesspace/data/indexer_pui_state/
    • rm -rf /path/to/archivesspace/data/solr_index/
  • Restart ArchivesSpace

ArchivesSpace > 3.1.0 (external Solr)

For external Solr there is a plugin that can perform all of the re-indexing steps: aspace-reindexer

Manual steps:

  • Shutdown ArchivesSpace
  • Delete these directories:
    • rm -rf /path/to/archivesspace/data/indexer_state/
    • rm -rf /path/to/archivesspace/data/indexer_pui_state/
  • Perform a delete all Solr query:
    • curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' --data-binary '{"delete":{"query":"*:*" }}' http://${solrUrl}:${solrPort}/solr/archivesspace/update?commit=true
  • Restart ArchivesSpace

You can watch the Tips for indexing ArchivesSpace youtube video to see these steps performed.