ColdFusion Unable to create Solr collection Error

Question

I'm trying to create a Solr collection in ColdFusion 9. I have never used Solr before, but I am following the directions in Forta's Web Application Construction Kit.

Every time I go to create the collection, I get the following error:

Unable to create collection usaf.

Unable to create Solr collection usaf.

An error occurred while creating the collection: org.apache.solr.common.SolrException. Check the Solr logs for more detail.

Anyone have a clue what's wrong? I have read that the update to CF 9.0.1 causes some issues with Solr -- I tried installing that update and it failed several times. Could that be the problem?

If so, how to solve it? This is on a production Windows Server 2008 and a previous attempt to uninstall and reinstall forced us to restore the server from an image because it was such a disaster.

Answer 1

I know this is a bit old but here is what I did to fix the same problem. Solr service in CF Administrator wasnt showing the core collection and it wouldnt let me create a new collection (as per above).

Using Win7, CF9.0.1

1. Stopped the Search service and the Solr service via the windows service manager.

2. Edited the file ColdFusion9\solr\multicore\solr.xml and removed the entries for the collections I was working on at the time it all stopped working. This is the step that seems to have made the difference. Backup the file first!!!

3. For the entries I removed from solr.xml I also removed the collection folders and files completely from the file system using windows file manager.

4. Restarted the Search service and Solr service. Core collection now appears in CF Administrator. My CF pages now create and index collections as they should. Phew!

Cheers, Murray

Answer 2

You can check CFAdmin under Data & Services > ColdFusion Collections to make Solr is running. Should be a default collection listed. If not, search runs as seperate services on Windows. Check that ColdFusion 9 Search Server and Solr Service are there and started.

Adobe has a standalone Solr install. http://www.adobe.com/support/coldfusion/downloads.html

Updating to 9.0.1 and hotfixes corrupted my Solr install. Had to reinstall CF from scratch.

Answer 3

It's also possible for the ColdFusion Solr Search Service to be running even though Solr is not. This can happen, for example, when there are errors in a collection's schema.xml file. I imagine there are other conditions under which this can happen. At any rate, as the poster above explained, if you look on CF Admin under "ColdFusion Collections" you should see at least the default Solr collection (core0). If you don't see that collection then Solr isn't running properly even if Windows tells you that the service is running.

Also, you may want to see if you can reach the Solr web service (port 8983 by default): http://localhost:8983/solr/

Answer 4

There could be 3 reasons for this: 1. Solr is not running. 2. Solr is running and if you are on Unix, Solr/CF is running as a non privileged user. 3. Solr is installed after CF. In that case go to CF Admin Data& Services->Solr Server(CF10) and provide solr home path.

Answer 5

It seems like solr service is timing out or not working properly for some reason.

First make sure that you can go to the Solr Admin UI on one host. Try http://hostname:8983/solr/ or http://localhost:8983/solr/ from RDP. If it is not working, then you will get the exact error or reason for why you are getting an error while adding CF collection. Most probably there should be CF collection which is not configured properly and you may remove those from 'ColdFusion9\solr\multicore\solr.xml'.

"TAKE A BACKUP IF YOU ARE TRYING TO MODIFY ANYTHING"