INSTALL
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Chapter 4. Installation
Table of Contents
4.1. Installing a prebuilt copy
4.2. Supporting packages
4.3. Building from source
4.4. Configuration overview
4.1. Installing a prebuilt copy
Recoll binary installations are always linked statically to the xapian
libraries, and have no other dependencies. You will only have to check or
install supporting applications for the file types that you want to index
beyond text, HTML and mail files.
4.1.1. Installing through a package system
If you use a BSD-type port system or a prebuilt package (RPM or other),
just follow the usual procedure, and maybe have a look at the
configuration section (but this may not be necessary for a quick test with
default parameters).
4.1.2. Installing a prebuilt Recoll
The unpackaged binary versions are just compressed tar files of a build
tree, where only the useful parts were kept (executables and sample
configuration).
The executable binary files are built with a static link to libxapian and
libiconv, to make installation easier (no dependencies). However, this
also means that you cannot change the versions which are used.
After extracting the tar file, you can proceed with installation as if you
had built the package from source (that is, just type make install). The
binary trees are built for installation to /usr/local.
You may then need to install external applications to process some file
types that you want indexed (ie: acrobat, postscript ...). See next
section.
Finally, you may want to have a look at the configuration section.
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4.2. Supporting packages
Recoll uses external applications to index some file types. You need to
install them for the file types that you wish to have indexed (these are
run-time dependencies. None is needed for building Recoll):
* Openoffice: supported natively, but needs the unzip command to be
installed.
* PDF: pdftotext is part of the Xpdf package.
* Postscript: pstotext.
* MS Word: antiword.
* MS Excel and PowerPoint: catdoc.
* RTF: unrtf
* dvi: dvips
* djvu: DjVuLibre
* MP3: Recoll will use the id3info command from the id3lib package to
extract tag information. Without it, only the file names will be
indexed.
Text, HTML, mail folders Openoffice and Scribus files are processed
internally. Lyx is used to index Lyx files. Many filters need sed and awk.
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4.3. Building from source
4.3.1. Prerequisites
At the very least, you will need to download and install the xapian core
package (Recoll development currently uses version 0.9.5), and the qt
run-time and development packages (Recoll development currently uses
version 3.3.5, but any 3.3 version is probably OK).
You will most probably be able to find a binary package for qt for your
system. You may have to compile Xapian but this is not difficult (if you
are using FreeBSD, there is a port).
You may also need libiconv. Recoll currently uses version 1.9 (this should
not be critical). On Linux systems, the iconv interface is part of libc
and you should not need to do anything special.
4.3.2. Building
Recoll has been built on Linux (redhat7.3, mandriva 2005/6, Fedora Core
3/4/5), FreeBSD and Solaris 8. If you build on another system, I would
very much welcome patches.
Depending on the qt configuration on your system, you may have to set the
QTDIR and QMAKESPECS variables in your environment:
* QTDIR should point to the directory above the one that holds the qt
include files (ie: if qt.h is /usr/local/qt/include/qt.h, QTDIR should
be /usr/local/qt).
* QMAKESPECS should be set to the name of one of the qt mkspecs
sub-directories (ie: linux-g++).
On many Linux systems, QTDIR is set by the login scripts, and QMAKESPECS
is not needed because there is a default link in mkspecs/.
Configure options: --without-aspell will disable the code for phonetic
matching of search terms. --with-fam or --with-inotify will enable the
code for real time indexing. Inotify support is enabled by default on
recent Linux systems.
Normal procedure:
cd recoll-xxx
configure
make
(practices usual hardship-repelling invocations)
There little auto-configuration. The configure script will mainly link one
of the system-specific files in the mk directory to mk/sysconf. If your
system is not known yet, it will tell you as much, and you may want to
manually copy and modify one of the existing files (the new file name
should be the output of uname -s).
4.3.3. Installation
Either type make install or execute recollinstall prefix, in the root of
the source tree. This will copy the commands to prefix/bin and the sample
configuration files, scripts and other shared data to prefix/share/recoll.
If the installation prefix given to recollinstall is different from what
was specified when executing configure, you will have to set the
RECOLL_DATADIR environment variable to indicate where the shared data is
to be found.
You can then proceed to configuration.
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4.4. Configuration overview
Most of the parameters specific to the recoll GUI are set through the
Preferences menu and stored in the standard QT place ($HOME/.qt/recollrc).
You probably do not want to edit this by hand.
For other options, Recoll uses text configuration files. You will have to
edit them by hand for now (there is still some hope for a GUI
configuration tool in the future). The most accurate documentation for the
configuration parameters is given by comments inside the default files,
and we will just give a general overview here.
There are two sets of configuration files. The system-wide files are kept
in a directory named like /usr/[local/]share/recoll/examples, they define
default values for the system. A parallel set of files exists by default
in the .recoll directory in your home. This directory can be changed with
the RECOLL_CONFDIR environment variable or the -c option parameter to
recoll and recollindex.
If the .recoll directory does not exist when recoll or recollindex are
started, it will be created with a set of empty configuration files.
recoll will give you a chance to edit the configuration file before
starting indexing. recollindex will proceed immediately. To avoid
mistakes, the automatic directory creation will only occur for the default
location, not if -c or RECOLL_CONFDIR were used (in the latter cases, you
will have to create the directory).
All configuration files share the same format. For example, a short
extract of the main configuration file might look as follows:
# Space-separated list of directories to index.
topdirs = ~/docs /usr/share/doc
[~/somedirectory-with-utf8-txt-files]
defaultcharset = utf-8
There are three kinds of lines:
* Comment (starts with #) or empty.
* Parameter affectation (name = value).
* Section definition ([somedirname]).
Section definitions allow redefining some parameters for a directory
sub-tree. They stay in effect until another section definition, or the end
of file, is encountered. Some of the parameters used for indexing are
looked up hierarchically from the current directory location upwards. Not
all parameters can be meaningfully redefined, this is specified for each
in the next section.
The tilde character (~) is expanded in file names to the name of the
user's home directory.
White space is used for separation inside lists. List elements with
embedded spaces can be quoted using double-quotes.
4.4.1. Main configuration file
recoll.conf is the main configuration file. It defines things like what to
index (top directories and things to ignore), and the default character
set to use for document types which do not specify it internally.
The default configuration will index your home directory. If this is not
appropriate, start recoll to create a blank configuration, click Cancel,
and edit the configuration file before restarting the command. This will
start the initial indexing, which may take some time.
Paramers:
topdirs
Specifies the list of directories or files to index (recursively
for directories). The indexer will not follow symbolic links
inside the indexed trees. If an entry in the topdirs list is a
symbolic link, indexing will not start and will generate an error.
dbdir
The name of the Xapian data directory. It will be created if
needed when the index is initialized. If this is not an absolute
path, it will be interpreted relative to the configuration
directory. The value can have embedded spaces but starting or
trailing spaces will be trimmed. You cannot use quotes here.
skippedNames
A space-separated list of patterns for names of files or
directories that should be completely ignored. The list defined in
the default file is:
skippedNames = #* bin CVS Cache cache* caughtspam tmp .thumbnails .svn \
*~ recollrc
The list can be redefined for sub-directories, but is only
actually changed for the top level ones in topdirs.
The top-level directories are not affected by this list (that is,
a directory in topdirs might match and would still be indexed).
The list in the default configuration does not exclude hidden
directories (names beginning with a dot), which means that it may
index quite a few things that you do not want. On the other hand,
mail user agents like thunderbird usually store messages in hidden
directories, and you probably want this indexed. One possible
solution is to have .* in skippedNames, and add things like
~/.thunderbird or ~/.evolution in topdirs.
skippedPaths and daemSkippedPaths
A space-separated list of patterns for paths of files or
directories that should be skipped. There is no default in the
sample configuration file, but the code always adds the
configuration and database directories in there.
skippedPaths is used both by batch and real time indexing.
daemSkippedPaths can be used to specify things that should be
indexed at startup, but not monitored.
Example of use for skipping text files only in a specific
directory:
skippedPaths = ~/somedir/*.txt
loglevel,daemloglevel
Verbosity level for recoll and recollindex. A value of 4 lists
quite a lot of debug/information messages. 2 only lists errors.
The daemversion is specific to the indexing monitor daemon.
logfilename, daemlogfilename
Where the messages should go. 'stderr' can be used as a special
value, and is the default. The daemversion is specific to the
indexing monitor daemon.
filtersdir
A directory to search for the external filter scripts used to
index some types of files. The value should not be changed, except
if you want to modify one of the default scripts. The value can be
redefined for any sub-directory.
indexstemminglanguages
A list of languages for which the stem expansion databases will be
built. See recollindex(1) for possible values. You can add a stem
expansion database for a different language by using recollindex
-s, but it will be deleted during the next indexing. Only
languages listed in the configuration file are permanent.
defaultcharset
The name of the character set used for files that do not contain a
character set definition (ie: plain text files). This can be
redefined for any sub-directory. If it is not set at all, the
character set used is the one defined by the nls environment
(LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG), or iso8859-1 if nothing is set.
guesscharset
Decide if we try to guess the character set of files if no
internal value is available (ie: for plain text files). This does
not work well in general, and should probably not be used.
usesystemfilecommand
Decide if we use the file -i system command as a final step for
determining the mime type for a file (the main procedure uses
suffix associations as defined in the mimemap file). This can be
useful for files with suffix-less names, but it will also cause
the indexing of many bogus "text" files.
indexallfilenames
Recoll indexes file names in a special section of the database to
allow specific file names searches using wild cards. This
parameter decides if file name indexing is performed only for
files with mime types that would qualify them for full text
indexing, or for all files inside the selected subtrees,
independently of mime type.
idxabsmlen
Recoll stores an abstract for each indexed file inside the
database. This is so that they can be displayed inside the result
lists without decoding the original file. This parameter defines
the size of the stored abstract (which can come from an actual
section or just be the beginning of the text). The default value
is 250.
iconsdir
The name of the directory where recoll result list icons are
stored. You can change this if you want different images.
4.4.2. The mimemap file
mimemap specifies the file name extension to mime type mappings.
For file names without an extension, or with an unknown one, the system's
file -i command will be executed to determine the mime type (this can be
switched off inside the main configuration file).
The mappings can be specified on a per-subtree basis, which may be useful
in some cases. Example: gaim logs have a .txt extension but should be
handled specially, which is possible because they are usually all located
in one place.
mimemap also has a recoll_noindex variable which is a list of suffixes.
Matching files will be skipped (which avoids unnecessary decompressions or
file executions). This is partially redundant with skippedNames in the
main configuration file, with two differences: it will not affect
directories, and it cannot be made dependant on the file-system location
(it is a configuration-wide parameter). You could accomplish with
skippedNames anything that recoll_noindex does. The latter is used mostly
for things known to be unindexable by a given Recoll version. Having it
there avoids cluttering the more user-oriented and locally customized
skippedNames.
4.4.3. The mimeconf file
mimeconf specifies how the different mime types are handled for indexing,
and which icons are displayed in the recoll result lists.
Changing the parameters in the [index] section is probably not a good idea
except if you are a Recoll developer.
The [icons] section allows you to change the icons which are displayed by
recoll in the result lists (the values are the basenames of the png images
inside the iconsdir directory (specified in recoll.conf).
4.4.4. The mimeview file
mimeview specifies which programs are started when you click on an Edit
link in a result list. Ie: HTML is normally displayed using firefox, but
you may prefer Konqueror, your openoffice.org program might be named
oofice instead of openoffice etc.
Changes to this file can be done by direct editing, or through the recoll
user preferences dialog.
As for the other configuration files, the normal usage is to have a
mimeview inside your own configuration directory, with just the
non-default entries, which will override those from the central
configuration file.
Please note that these entries must be placed under a [view] section.
If Use desktop preferences to choose document editor is checked in the
user preferences, all mimeview entries will be ignored except the one
labelled application/x-all (which is set to use xdg-open by default).
4.4.5. Examples of configuration adjustments
4.4.5.1. Adding an external viewer for an non-indexed type
Imagine that you have some kind of file which does not have indexable
content, but for which you would like to have a functional Edit link in
the result list (when found by file name). The file names end in .blob and
can be displayed by application blobviewer.
You need two entries in the configuration files for this to work:
* In $RECOLL_CONFDIR/mimemap (typically ~/.recoll/mimemap), add the
following line:
application/x-blobapp = .blob
Note that the mime type is made up here, and you could call it
diesel/oil just the same.
* In $RECOLL_CONFDIR/mimeview under the [view] section:
application/x-blobapp = blobviewer %f
We are supposing that blobviewer wants a file name parameter here, you
would use %u if it liked URLs better.
If you just wanted to change the application used by Recoll to display a
mime type which it already knows, you would just need to edit mimeview.
The entries you add in your personal file override those in the central
configuration, which you do not need to alter
4.4.5.2. Adding indexing support for a new file type
Let us now imagine that the above .blob files actually contain indexable
text and that you know how to extract it with a command line program.
Getting Recoll to index the files is easy. You need to perform the above
alteration, and also to add data to the mimeconf file (typically in
~/.recoll/mimeconf):
* Under the [index] section, add the following line (more about the
rclblob indexing script later):
application/x-blobapp = exec rclblob
* Under the [icons] section, you should choose an icon to be displayed
for the files inside the result lists. Icons are normally 64x64 pixels
PNG files which live in /usr/[local/]share/recoll/images.
* Under the [categories] section, you should add the mime type where it
makes sense (you can also create a category). Categories may be used
for filtering in advanced search.
The rclblob filter should be an executable program or script which exists
inside /usr/[local/]share/recoll/filters. It will be given a file name as
argument and should output the text contents in html format on the
standard output.
The html could be very minimal like the following example:
<html><head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>some text content</body></html>
You should take care to escape some characters inside the text by
transforming them into appropriate entities. "&" should be transformed
into "&", "<" should be transformed into "<".
The character set needs to be specified in the header. It does not need to
be UTF-8 (Recoll will take care of translating it), but it must be
accurate for good results.
Recoll will also make use of other header fields if they are present:
title, description, keywords.
The easiest way to write a new filter is probably to start from an
existing one.
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