.\" $Id: recollindex.1,v 1.7 2008-09-05 10:25:54 dockes Exp $ (C) 2005 J.F.Dockes\$
.TH RECOLLINDEX 1 "8 January 2006"
.SH NAME
recollindex \- indexing command for the Recoll full text search system
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B recollindex \-h
.br
.B recollindex
[
.B \-c
<configdir>
]
[
.B \-z|\-Z
]
[
.B \-k
]
.br
.B recollindex
[
.B \-c
<cd>
]
.B \-m
[
.B \-w
<secs>
]
[
.B \-D
]
[
.B \-x
]
[
.B \-C
]
[
.B \-n|-k
]
.br
.B recollindex
[
.B \-c
<cd>
]
.B \-i
[
.B \-Z \-k \-f \-P
]
[<path [path ...]>]
.br
.B recollindex
[
.B \-c
<cd>
]
.B \-r
[
.B \-Z \-K \-e \-f
]
[
.B \-p
pattern
]
<dirpath>
.br
.B recollindex
[
.B \-c
<configdir>
]
.B \-e
[<path [path ...]>]
.br
.B recollindex
[
.B \-c
<configdir>
]
.B \-l
.br
.B recollindex
[
.B \-c
<configdir>
]
.B \-s
<lang>
.br
.B recollindex
[
.B \-c
<configdir>
]
.B \-S
.br
.B recollindex
[
.B \-c
<configdir>
]
.B \-E
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.B recollindex
command is the Recoll indexer.
.PP
As indexing can sometimes take a long time, the command can be interrupted
by sending an interrupt (Ctrl-C, SIGINT) or terminate (SIGTERM)
signal. Some time may elapse before the process exits, because it needs to
properly flush and close the index. This can also be done from the recoll
GUI (menu entry: File/Stop_Indexing). After such an interruption, the index
will be somewhat inconsistent because some operations which are normally
performed at the end of the indexing pass will have been skipped (for
example, the stemming and spelling databases will be inexistant or out of
date). You just need to restart indexing at a later time to restore
consistency. The indexing will restart at the interruption point (the full
file tree will be traversed, but files that were indexed up to the
interruption and for which the index is still up to date will not need to
be reindexed).
.PP
The
.B \-c
option specifies the configuration directory name, overriding the
default or $RECOLL_CONFDIR.
.PP
There are several modes of operation.
.PP
The normal mode will index the set of files described in the configuration
file
.B recoll.conf.
This will incrementally update the database with files that changed since
the last run. If option
.B \-z
is given, the database will be erased before starting. If option
.B \-Z
is given, the database will not be reset, but all files will be considered
as needing reindexing (in place reset).
.PP
As of version 1.21,
.B recollindex
usually does not process again files which previously failed to index (for
example because of a missing helper program). If option
.B \-k
is given,
.B recollindex
will try again to process all failed files. Please note that
.B recollindex
may also decide to retry failed files if the auxiliary checking script
defined by the "checkneedretryindexscript" configuration variable indicates
that this should happen.
.PP
If option
.B
\-m
is given, recollindex is started for real time monitoring, using the
file system monitoring package it was configured for (either fam, gamin, or
inotify). This mode must have been explicitly configured when building the
package, it is not available by default. The program will normally detach
from the controlling terminal and become a daemon. If option
.B
\-D
is given, it will stay in the foreground. Option
.B
\-w
<seconds> can be used to specify that the program should sleep for the
specified time before indexing begins. The default value is 60. The daemon
normally monitors the X11 session and exits when it is reset.
Option
.B
\-x
disables this X11 session monitoring (daemon will stay alive even if it
cannot connect to the X11 server). You need to use this too if you use the
daemon without an X11 context. You can use option
.B
\-n
to skip the initial incrementing pass which is normally performed before
monitoring starts. Once monitoring is started, the daemon normally monitors
the configuration and restarts from scratch if a change is made. You can
disable this with option
.B
\-C
.PP
.B recollindex \-i
will index individual files into the database. The stem expansion and
aspell databases will not be updated. The skippedPaths and skippedNames
configuration variables will be used, so that some files may be
skipped. You can tell recollindex to ignore skippedPaths and skippedNames
by setting the
.B
\-f option. This allows fully custom file selection for a given subtree,
for which you would add the top directory to skippedPaths, and use any
custom tool to generate the file list (ie: a tool from a source code
control system). When run this way, the indexer normally does not perform
the deleted files purge pass, because it cannot be sure to have seen all
the existing files. You can force a purge pass with
.B
\-P.
.PP
.B recollindex \-e
will erase data for individual files from the database. The stem expansion
databases will not be updated.
.PP
Options
.B
\-i
and
.B
\-e
can be combined. This will first perform the purge, then the indexing.
.PP
With options
.B \-i
or
.B \-e
, if no file names are given on the command line, they
will be read from stdin, so that you could for example run:
.PP
find /path/to/dir \-print | recollindex \-e \-i
.PP
to force the reindexing of a directory tree (which has to exist inside the
file system area defined by
.I topdirs
in recoll.conf). You could mostly accomplish the same thing with
.PP
find /path/to/dir \-print | recollindex \-Z \-i
.PP
The latter will perform a less thorough job of purging stale sub-documents
though.
.PP
.B recollindex \-r
mostly works like
.B \-i
, but the parameter is a single directory, which will
be recursively updated. This mostly does nothing more than
.B find topdir | recollindex \-i
but it may be more convenient to use when started from another
program. This retries failed files by default, use option
.B \-K
to change. One or multiple
.B \-p
options can be used to set shell-type selection patterns (e.g.: *.pdf).
.PP
.B recollindex \-l
will list the names of available language stemmers.
.PP
.B recollindex \-s
will build the stem expansion database for a given language, which may or
may not be part of the list in the configuration file. If the language is
not part of the configuration, the stem expansion database will be deleted
at the end of the next normal indexing run. You can get the list of stemmer
names from the
.B recollindex \-l
command. Note that this is mostly for experimental use, the normal way to
add a stemming language is to set it in the configuration, either by
editing "recoll.conf" or by using the GUI indexing configuration dialog.
.br
At the time of this writing, the following languages
are recognized (out of Xapian's stem.h):
.IP \(bu
danish
.IP \(bu
dutch
.IP \(bu
english Martin Porter's 2002 revision of his stemmer
.IP \(bu
english_lovins Lovin's stemmer
.IP \(bu
english_porter Porter's stemmer as described in his 1980 paper
.IP \(bu
finnish
.IP \(bu
french
.IP \(bu
german
.IP \(bu
italian
.IP \(bu
norwegian
.IP \(bu
portuguese
.IP \(bu
russian
.IP \(bu
spanish
.IP \(bu
swedish
.PP
.B recollindex \-S
will rebuild the phonetic/orthographic index. This feature uses the
.B aspell
package, which must be installed on the system.
.PP
.B recollindex \-E
will check the configuration file for topdirs and other relevant paths
existence (to help catch typos).
.SH SEE ALSO
.PP
recoll(1) recoll.conf(5)