M2: Category Flat Data re-indexing never finishes?

Question

So I know this used to be a common problem in M1.x. However, I only recently noticed this in our M2.1.3 environment.

How can I flush/wipe the Category flat data index and rebuild from scratch?

Answer 1

It normally happens when the memory limit is few, so increase on your .htaccess or NGINX config.

Run this command on your MySQL:

update indexer_state set status = 'invalid' where status != 'valid';

On you terminal run:

alias mage="php -d memory_limit=-1 -f bin/magento"
mage indexer:reindex

Answer 2

You can also check mview_state table and set status to idle on that indexer then run it from cli with

php bin/magento indexer:reindex catalog_category_flat

If it break you should see some stack trace in the console