Installing Solr on Windows with Wamp

Solr is a great tool for full-text searching and more, from Apache Software Foundation. Its based on Apache Lucene search library and extends it. In this post I will let you know how to install Solr on Windows and integrating it with WAMP. Integration with WAMP is not mandatory if you are not using it. The esyest way to install solr on Windows is to use Solr installer from BitNami. This can be found here http://bitnami.com/stack/solr. Download the installer and run it with administrative rights. Try to keep the installation path simple something like “c:/solr/” will be appropriate. It will also install an apache server so if you don’t have wamp or apache already install than its super easy, just go with the flow. If you already have wamp installed than make this apache listen on some available port  other than 80 (where wamp apache is listening). Once the setup is complete Solr will be available for use in port selected during setup (see no big deal). Now if you have wamp and you don’t want to have two apache services running do the following steps.

• Enable proxy_module and proxy_http_module via wamp menu or directly from apache conf file.
• Open httpd.conf file and add following line at the end of the file

  Include "c:/solr/apache-solr/conf/solr.conf"

  Note that the path here should be correctly pointing to the solr.conf file. Use the path where you installed the Solr.

• Now restart the wamp apache via wamp menu. If it starts correctly than its cool, otherwise check if you have correctly enabled the said modules, and path to solr config file.
• Now check http://localhost/solr/ this should show the dashboard for solr.
• Remember the extra apache service we need to disable it so it does not start automatically as we don’t need it. So goto Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services , double click “solrApache” service and change its “Startup Type” to “Manual”. Now it will not start once your system is restated.

Happy solr searching