It is possible to rebuild the Unified-Index from a browser. However due to possible timeout during long operation it is recommended to do this ONLY on relatively small Tiki (based on the number and the size of your Tiki objects). For medium to high load sites, it is strongly recommended do that operation from the command line (much less limited), see the next paragraph.

• From the admin dashboard, on the main tiki menu click on the item Control Panels, then click on the Search panel. At the top of the page you will find a Rebuild Index button.
• From your URL address bar tiki-admin.php?page=search&rebuild=now

The search index can be rebuilt manually from the command line or you can use the Tiki Scheduler since Tiki17 - see Rebuild the Unified Index with log sample or a Cron job since Tiki9 to runs the command automatically - see Cron Job to Rebuild Search Index.

Below are the commands that may be used to rebuild the index. Check Console documentation.

You can also rebuild it using the unified console.php command, with the appropriate parameters. For example:

Basic command

php console.php index:rebuild

<-- or -->

php console.php i:r

<-- or add visual verbose, to follow what is going on -->

php console.php i:r -p

Multitiki sites

For multitiki sites, you can rebuild with commands like:

php console.php index:rebuild --site=site1.example.com  
php console.php index:rebuild --site=site2.example.com  
...

Successful rebuild

If the rebuild is successful a message like the following will be produced (for cron jobs, this can usually be sent to you via email as part of automatically running the command):

Started rebuilding index...

Unified search
--------------

Engine: MySQL, version 5.7.34
Indexed
  trackeritem: 210
  tracker: 13
  trackerfield: 104
  article: 67
  file: 285
  file gallery: 20
  comment: 0
  user: 8
  group: 7
  wiki page: 55
  category: 18
Rebuilding index done
Index: index_6291d4b25591f

Execution Statistics
---------------------

Execution time: 16 secs
Current Memory usage: 51.0 MiB
Memory peak usage before indexing: 22.5 MiB
Memory peak usage after indexing: 51.2 MiB
Number of queries: 12383

Relations Tracker field

If you use the Relations Tracker Field, and are starting from an empty index, you should probably rebuild twice.

Troubleshooting

If the rebuild is unsuccessful, instead of the above message you may get a message that indicates there has been an internal server error, or it may say "Rebuild in progress." This may be because the rebuild process uses more memory or takes more time than allowed by the server's php settings. Such settings can be changed on the fly as part of the rebuild command - examples of how to do this are shown below.

Not enough memory

Increase memory limit
One way to increase memory is to change the memory_limit php setting as follows (this example changes the memory limit to 4 gigabytes while the rebuild process is running):

php -dmemory_limit=4G console.php i:r --log

You could also direct php to use a specific php.ini file, where there may be a higher memory limit setting or no limit. In this case you would use the -c parameter followed by the path to the php.ini file, as in the example below:

php -c /etc/php5/cli/php.ini console.php i:r --log

Timeout error

Increase maximum execution time
Getting an internal server error may indicate the rebuild process takes longer than the max_execution_time php setting. That can be increased as part of the command as shown below where the max execution time is set to 300 seconds, or 5 minutes. (This command is also increasing the memory limit as described above):

php -dmemory_limit=4G -dmax_execution_time=300 console.php i:r --log

Force rebuild

When the rebuild is unsuccessful with a "Rebuild in progress" message, this usually means that the rebuild failed previously in the middle of the process, leaving a temporary folder called temp/unified-index-new on the server. When a new rebuild is started and the program sees this folder, it thinks there is a rebuild already in progress and will stop. You can either delete this folder before rebuilding again or include the --force parameter in the rebuild command as follows:

php -dmemory_limit=4G -dmax_execution_time=300 console.php i:r --force --log

Log to review possible problems with content

php console.php i:r -p --log

Several index_ files in the database

Typically happening when using the same database over and over you may end with several indexes in your database.
We provide a developer tool to clean properly this issue.
You need to be the web user and use bash to run the script.

bash doc/devtools/clear_mysql_search_indexes.bash

You need to rebuild your index after the operation.

Deprecated Zend_Search_Lucene

With the now deprecated Zend_Search_Lucene, the unified-index is stored in your Tiki directory temp/unified-index/. While the rebuild is occurring, a directory temp/unified-index-new/ will appear (This is to permit the existing index to be used until the new one is ready). If temp/unified-index-new/ doesn't disappear after the indexing, something must have gone wrong. You can delete it and try the re-indexing again. You may want to run sh setup.sh to make sure the permissions are OK.

• Exclude some fields from the unified index

IndexRebuild | Index Rebuild