I found very little (if anything) out there with people trying to setup Solr 6 and Dovecot 2 so thought i’d post this up.  Perhaps it will help someone else along the way.

What i’m running:-

• FreebSD 12
• Openjdk 8
• Dovecot 2 (installed from pkgs)
• Apache-solr 8 (downloaded direct from apache)

I’m not going to cover how to install and configure dovecot here but in short I installed it using “pkg install dovecot2” on FreeBSD and configured based on my needs in /usr/local/etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf along with the following entries to enable FTS and Solr

...
mail_plugins = $mail_plugins quota fts fts_solr
...
plugin {
fts_autoindex=yes
fts = solr
fts_solr = url=http://localhost:8983/solr/dovecot/
}
...
protocol imap {
mail_plugins = quota imap_quota fts fts_solr
}
protocol lmtp {
mail_plugins = quota fts fts_solr
}
...

The above assumes that you’re running solr on localhost of course.

Now, in Solr version 5+ you no longer need tomcat or jetty installed separately to run solr so forget reading any articles that advise you to install these unless you’re running solr version 4 or older.  Reason being, solr now ships with a copy of jetty and all the startup scripts you need.

1. All you need to install is OpenJDK 8 JRE and make sure that your java version output is at least version 1.8 as below

   # java -version
   openjdk version "1.8.0_92"
   OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_92-b14)
   OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.92-b14, mixed mode)
   

   Version 1.7 (OpenJDK 7) will not work with solr and you will find that solr will not start

   pkg install openjdk8-jre-8 (try pkg search openjdk8 - you need JRE)

   This will prompt you to install numerous java packages and other bits and bobs.

2. Download a copy of apache solr and extract to a suitable location.  The below is using Solr 6 but I’ll come on to the differences you need between 6 and 8.

   mkdir /opt
   cd /opt
   fetch http://www-eu.apache.org/dist/lucene/solr/6.1.0/solr-6.1.0.tgz
   tar -xvzf  solr-6.1.0.tgz
   mv solr-6.1.0 solr
   

3. Solr should now just start without issue by running the below

   bin/solr start
   

   once started it will drop to the background

4. Now solr should be running you can create a brand new collection for dovecot

   bin/solr create -c dovecot -n dovecot
   

5. If all went well you’ll have a new collection made, so lets navigate to the configuration folder

   cd /opt/solr/server/solr/dovecot/conf/
   

6. Once there you’ll need to create a file named schema.xml and load it with the following schema.Dovecot 2.2:-

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
   
   <!--
   For fts-solr:
   
   This is the Solr schema file, place it into solr/conf/schema.xml. You may
   want to modify the tokenizers and filters.
   -->
   <schema name="dovecot" version="1.5">
   <types>
   <!-- IMAP has 32bit unsigned ints but java ints are signed, so use longs -->
   <fieldType name="string" class="solr.StrField" />
   <fieldType name="long" class="solr.TrieLongField" />
   <fieldType name="boolean" class="solr.BoolField" />
   
   <fieldType name="text" class="solr.TextField" positionIncrementGap="100">
   <analyzer type="index">
   <tokenizer class="solr.StandardTokenizerFactory"/>
   <filter class="solr.StopFilterFactory" ignoreCase="true" words="lang/stopwords_en.txt"/>
   <filter class="solr.WordDelimiterFilterFactory" generateWordParts="1" generateNumberParts="1" catenateWords="1" catenateNumbers="1" catenateAll="0" splitOnCaseChange="1"/>
   <filter class="solr.LowerCaseFilterFactory"/>
   <filter class="solr.EnglishPossessiveFilterFactory"/>
   <filter class="solr.KeywordMarkerFilterFactory" protected="protwords.txt"/>
   <filter class="solr.EnglishMinimalStemFilterFactory"/>
   </analyzer>
   <analyzer type="query">
   <tokenizer class="solr.StandardTokenizerFactory"/>
   <filter class="solr.SynonymFilterFactory" synonyms="synonyms.txt" ignoreCase="true" expand="true"/>
   <filter class="solr.StopFilterFactory" ignoreCase="true" words="lang/stopwords_en.txt"/>
   <filter class="solr.WordDelimiterFilterFactory" generateWordParts="1" generateNumberParts="1" catenateWords="0" catenateNumbers="0" catenateAll="0" splitOnCaseChange="1"/>
   <filter class="solr.LowerCaseFilterFactory"/>
   <filter class="solr.EnglishPossessiveFilterFactory"/>
   <filter class="solr.KeywordMarkerFilterFactory" protected="protwords.txt"/>
   <filter class="solr.EnglishMinimalStemFilterFactory"/>
   </analyzer>
   </fieldType>
   </types>
   <fields>
   <field name="id" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="true" />
   <field name="uid" type="long" indexed="true" stored="true" required="true" />
   <field name="box" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="true" />
   <field name="user" type="string" indexed="true" stored="true" required="true" />
   
   <field name="hdr" type="text" indexed="true" stored="false" />
   <field name="body" type="text" indexed="true" stored="false" />
   
   <field name="from" type="text" indexed="true" stored="false" />
   <field name="to" type="text" indexed="true" stored="false" />
   <field name="cc" type="text" indexed="true" stored="false" />
   <field name="bcc" type="text" indexed="true" stored="false" />
   <field name="subject" type="text" indexed="true" stored="false" />
   
   <!-- Used by Solr internally: -->
   <field name="_version_" type="long" indexed="true" stored="true"/>
   </fields>
   
   <uniqueKey>id</uniqueKey>
   </schema>
   

   Dovecot 2.3:-

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   
   <schema name="dovecot" version="2.0">
     <fieldType name="string" class="solr.StrField" omitNorms="true" sortMissingLast="true"/>
     <fieldType name="long" class="solr.LongPointField" positionIncrementGap="0"/>
     <fieldType name="boolean" class="solr.BoolField" sortMissingLast="true"/>
   
     <fieldType name="text" class="solr.TextField" autoGeneratePhraseQueries="true" positionIncrementGap="100">
       <analyzer type="index">
         <tokenizer class="solr.StandardTokenizerFactory"/>
         <filter class="solr.StopFilterFactory" words="stopwords.txt" ignoreCase="true"/>
         <filter class="solr.WordDelimiterGraphFilterFactory" catenateNumbers="1" generateNumberParts="1" splitOnCaseChange="1" generateWordParts="1" splitOnNumerics="1" catenateAll="1" catenateWords="1"/>
         <filter class="solr.FlattenGraphFilterFactory"/>
         <filter class="solr.LowerCaseFilterFactory"/>
         <filter class="solr.KeywordMarkerFilterFactory" protected="protwords.txt"/>
         <filter class="solr.PorterStemFilterFactory"/>
       </analyzer>
       <analyzer type="query">
         <tokenizer class="solr.StandardTokenizerFactory"/>
         <filter class="solr.SynonymGraphFilterFactory" expand="true" ignoreCase="true" synonyms="synonyms.txt"/>
         <filter class="solr.FlattenGraphFilterFactory"/>
         <filter class="solr.StopFilterFactory" words="stopwords.txt" ignoreCase="true"/>
         <filter class="solr.WordDelimiterGraphFilterFactory" catenateNumbers="1" generateNumberParts="1" splitOnCaseChange="1" generateWordParts="1" splitOnNumerics="1" catenateAll="1" catenateWords="1"/>
         <filter class="solr.LowerCaseFilterFactory"/>
         <filter class="solr.KeywordMarkerFilterFactory" protected="protwords.txt"/>
         <filter class="solr.PorterStemFilterFactory"/>
       </analyzer>
     </fieldType>
   
     <field name="id" type="string" indexed="true" required="true" stored="true"/>
     <field name="uid" type="long" indexed="true" required="true" stored="true"/>
     <field name="box" type="string" indexed="true" required="true" stored="true"/>
     <field name="user" type="string" indexed="true" required="true" stored="true"/>
   
     <field name="hdr" type="text" indexed="true" stored="false"/>
     <field name="body" type="text" indexed="true" stored="false"/>
   
     <field name="from" type="text" indexed="true" stored="false"/>
     <field name="to" type="text" indexed="true" stored="false"/>
     <field name="cc" type="text" indexed="true" stored="false"/>
     <field name="bcc" type="text" indexed="true" stored="false"/>
     <field name="subject" type="text" indexed="true" stored="false"/>
   
     <!-- Used by Solr internally: -->
     <field name="_version_" type="long" indexed="true" stored="true"/>
   
     <uniqueKey>id</uniqueKey>
   </schema>

7. Now you need to delete the managed schema file that comes with solr 5+ as we will not be using a managed schema

   rm managed-schema
   

8. Next, open up the below file in a text editor, i.e.

   vi solrconfig.xml

   For Solr 5 and 6 completely remove this section

   <processor class="solr.AddSchemaFieldsUpdateProcessorFactory">
   <str name="defaultFieldType">strings</str>
   <lst name="typeMapping">
   <str name="valueClass">java.lang.Boolean</str>
   <str name="fieldType">booleans</str>
   </lst>
   <lst name="typeMapping">
   <str name="valueClass">java.util.Date</str>
   <str name="fieldType">tdates</str>
   </lst>
   <lst name="typeMapping">
   <str name="valueClass">java.lang.Long</str>
   <str name="valueClass">java.lang.Integer</str>
   <str name="fieldType">tlongs</str>
   </lst>
   <lst name="typeMapping">
   <str name="valueClass">java.lang.Number</str>
   <str name="fieldType">tdoubles</str>
   </lst>
   </processor>

   For solr 8 you need to do the following:-

   1. Remove the element add-schema-fields from <updateRequestProcessorChain’s processor attribute.

   2. Completely remove the below section

    <updateProcessor class="solr.AddSchemaFieldsUpdateProcessorFactory" name="add-schema-fields">
   
   <lst name="typeMapping">
   
   <str name="valueClass">java.lang.String</str>
   
   <str name="fieldType">text_general</str>
   
   <lst name="copyField">
   
   <str name="dest">*_str</str>
   
   <int name="maxChars">256</int>
   
   </lst>
   
   <!-- Use as default mapping instead of defaultFieldType -->
   
   <bool name="default">true</bool>
   
   </lst>
   
   <lst name="typeMapping">
   
   <str name="valueClass">java.lang.Boolean</str>
   
   <str name="fieldType">booleans</str>
   
   </lst>
   
   <lst name="typeMapping">
   
   <str name="valueClass">java.util.Date</str>
   
   <str name="fieldType">pdates</str>
   
   </lst>
   
   <lst name="typeMapping">
   
   <str name="valueClass">java.lang.Long</str>
   
   <str name="valueClass">java.lang.Integer</str>
   
   <str name="fieldType">plongs</str>
   
   </lst>
   
   <lst name="typeMapping">
   
   <str name="valueClass">java.lang.Number</str>
   
   <str name="fieldType">pdoubles</str>
   
   </lst>
   
   </updateProcessor>

   Now for all versions, in the same file find the line that reads the below

   See http://wiki.apache.org/solr/GuessingFieldTypes-->

   and add in the following just below it

   <schemaFactory class="ClassicIndexSchemaFactory">
   </schemaFactory>
   

9. With a bit of luck that’s everything you need to do so go ahead and restart solr by issuing /opt/solr/bin/solr restart and head straight to the logs file and you should hopefully see the following.

   tail -f /opt/solr/server/logs/solr.log
   ......
   2016-08-15 14:40:37.515 INFO (coreLoadExecutor-6-thread-1) [ x:dovecot] o.a.s.c.CoreContainer registering core: dovecot
   

   If you see any errors about failing to register field types, double check over the steps above and make sure you didn’t miss anything or something managed to creep back in

10. finally open up another terminal and tail the solr log file as above whilst running the following command in dovecot and you should have all your emails indexed into solr 🙂

    doveadm index -A inbox

    Good luck!