Critical Steps when Installing or Upgrading Solr

  • Updated

If you do not follow the steps below when upgrading to Solr  6 - 7.4.0 (7.4.0 is used by Ektron 9.4)  you may see this error when registering a site. 

Oops! Something went wrong... 
A preliminary status check for the search environment has failed. The most common reasons for this are that the target Ektron site is currently being crawled, Solr or ManifoldCF are not running, or the search server does not meet the minimum requirements for hosting Solr. (Code: REQUEST_VALIDATION_FAILED) 
Logs are available for this console and for the Ektron Solr Administrative Service, which may contain additional details.
If that's the case, or you are trying to avoid any issues, see the resolution below. 

Notes:

  • The downloaded version of Solr should match the Ektron version. In other words, make sure the Solr download comes from the same download folder as the Ektron download. 
  • Solr downloads can be found here.

Be sure to follow the steps in the official documentation when installing Solr. The below steps only apply to 9.2+ versions of Solr. 

  1. If upgrading, uininstall the current version of Solr(if present) by removing it in the control panel's programs and features. You cannot install the new version without this step.
  2. Apache Solr 7.x+ can run on OpenJDK 8 (e.g. version 8u242). If you previously had Java 1.7.x, uninstall it and install the latest version of OpenJDK 8 or the paid version of Java 8 JDK.
    Redhat Java Downloads https://developers.redhat.com/products/openjdk/download (download the 64 bit MSI to get the installer)
  3. Create a “JAVA_HOME” home variable by following these steps.
    1. On the Start menu, click Control Panel > double-click System.
    2. In the System Properties dialog, click the Advanced tab, then Environment Variables.
    3. In the Environment Variables dialog, in the System variables frame, click New.
      Please note that the system variables frame is not the same as the user variables.
    4. In the New System Variable dialog box, type JAVA_HOME in the Variable name field, and the path of the java directory in the Variable value field(e.g.
      C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_X\ or C:\Program Files\RedHat\Java-1.X.0-openJDK\)
      . 
      java_environment_variable.png
    5. Click OK.
    6. As of 9.4 SP1 the path variable is needed in order to create SSL certificates. Double click on Path in the system variables. 
    7. Click new and add the path to any bin directories within the JDK folder. Note that with OpenJDK there are two bin directories. 
      Redhat OpenJDK
      java_path.png
      Oracle path
      2020-11-25_09_59_36.png
    8. Click OK to exit the System Properties dialog.
    9. Once complete you should be able do the following to pull up your Java JDK folder.
      1. Open file explorer.
      2. Enter %JAVA_HOME% into the address bar.
  4. Give the search user (see the 'log on as' user for the Ektron Solr Process Manager service) the "lock pages in memory" permission. You assign this in the machine's Local Security Policy under Local Policy > User Rights Assignment.
  5. Install the newest version of Solr(see download link above) that matches the Ektron version. 
  6. Restart the server.
  7. Follow the steps in this article: Solr Maintenance Steps
  8. Follow the steps outlined in this article: Ektron Log4j vulnerability