SolrCore is not available due to init failure

[gitressa]

Preliminary checklist

• I am using the latest stable version of DDEV
• I am using the latest stable version of this add-on

Expected Behavior

I am starting to see an error in DDEV, after a restart. The web site says: "Error message - An error occurred while searching, try again later."

And if I try to connect to it with Drush, where my "Default Solr collection" (core?) is called my_core:

"msg":"SolrCore 'my_core' is not available due to init failure: ",

After deleting the collection with Drush (drush search-api-solr:delete-collection solr_server) and both core and collection are empty:

No collections available Go and create one
No cores available Go and create one

... in the Solr admin GUI (https://mysite.ddev.site:8943), it shows this error message at the top:

SolrCore Initialization Failures my_core: org.apache.solr.common.SolrException:org.apache.solr.common.SolrException: Please check your logs for more information

The solution seems to be to start fresh, by deleting core and collection, and then also delete the core by visiting this URL:

https://mysite.ddev.site:8943/solr/admin/cores?action=UNLOAD&core=my_core&deleteInstanceDir=true

... and recreate the config with drush search-api-solr:upload-configset --numShards=1 solr_server.

Though, that might not always result in a working environment, and in the end, the only method that fixes, it is uninstalling the DDEV Solr add-on, and re-installing it.

Actual Behavior

It fails to init.

Steps To Reproduce

No response

Anything else?

No response

[rfay]

This is a solr problem then, not a ddev-solr problem. Solr is so hard!

[gitressa]

Yes, Solr can be a bit of a challenge! I have been using it as a cache, but will try to use standard Search API in my next project, but with Redis caching. Let's see if that's efficient? I added a When to consider other backends, such as Solr or Elasticsearch section recently, after looking into this subject.

I realize that this may be a general Solr problem, but since this happens locally in DDEV, it could play a role? Also, it's not consistent, but happens randomly ...

[rfay]

You'll want to ddev logs -s solr and try to understand the huge java stack traces. Maybe there will be something there for you.

And of course, Solr is a huge memory user. So if you're on a Docker provider that has a memory limit, you'll want to increase it. And the instructions here show how to increase the amount that Java is allowed to use. Increase that.

[gitressa]

Thanks @rfay, I'll definitely use that command if it happens again, and share any details here.

About memory, that could be it ... though usually, I got around 8 GB's free out of 16 GB on my system when I run DDEV, but something to look out for.

[rfay]

Hmm, I guess I was thinking of Elasticsearch with similar config for memory, https://github.com/ddev/ddev-elasticsearch/blob/main/README.md?plain=1#L63-L74, don't see anything for Solr.

Take a look at https://solr.apache.org/guide/solr/latest/deployment-guide/jvm-settings.html for clues. And of course, see if it's an OOM thing you're hitting by using ddev logs -s solr when it happens.

@mkalkbrenner probably knows everything about this.

[das-peter]

@gitressa Any chance you've the search_api_solr_nlp module enabled?

[gitressa]

Thanks for checking @das-peter, but I am not using that module ... Have you experienced the same thing, while using that module?

Luckily, it only happens occasionally ... I'll make sure to report back with all the details I can gather, if it happens again.

[das-peter]

@gitressa "Glad" to hear. But then I'm of no help.
I just abandoned this addon in favor of a DYI solr service based on lagoon images.
The issue I had was the SolrException:
Not uploading file %s to config, as it matched the MAGIC signature of a forbidden mime type %s
Which was caused by the search_api_solr_nlp module using its config with zipped *.bin files (e.g. de-token.bin)
This gets stuck in the isFileForbiddenInConfigset handling of solrs file upload handling.
And I haven't found a workaround for that.

[gitressa]

It happened again, perhaps after we upgraded to DDEV 1.24.7? I quickly ran this, and even the old indexed still work :)

ddev add-on remove ddev/ddev-solr
ddev add-on get ddev/ddev-solr

[mikkmiggur]

I have the same issue.
I did:
ddev stop && ddev add-on remove ddev/ddev-solr
rm -rf .ddev/solr
ddev add-on get ddev/ddev-solr && ddev restart
So it should be a fresh setup.
But right after that, on the Solr UI, I have an error message SolrCore Initialization Failures. From logs, I can also see SolrCore failed to load on startup.
I haven't found the way to get it running at all.
DDEV version v1.24.7

[rfay]

That's not a fresh setup until you delete the solr docker volume. Probably the docker volume. I'm sure the install.yaml should delete the volume on removal, but it doesn't currently.

[rfay]

To delete the docker volume, ddev delete, which deletes everything including your database, or ddev poweroff and then docker volume ls | grep solr and use docker volume rm <name> to delete the proper solr volume.