5.6 Administrating a Broker

Administrators have two basic ways for managing a Broker: through the broker.conf and Collection.conf configuration files, and through the interactive administrative interface. The interactive interface controls various facilities and operating parameters within the Broker. We provide a HTML interface page for these administrative commands. See Sections 5.6 and 5.9 for more detailed information on the Broker administrative and collector interfaces.

    The broker.conf file is a list of variable names and their values, which consists of information about the Broker (such as the directory in which it lives) and the port on which it runs. The Collection.conf file (see Section 5.9 for an example) is a list of collection points from which the Broker collects its indexing information. The CreateBroker program automatically generates both of these configuration files. You can manually edit these files if needed.

  The CreateBroker program also creates the admin.html file, which is the WWW interface to the Broker's administrative commands. Note that all administrative commands require a password as defined in broker.conf. Note: Changes to the Broker configuration are not saved when the Broker is restarted. Permanent changes to the Broker configuration should be made by manually editing the broker.conf file.

The administrative interface created by CreateBroker has the following window fields:

Command         Select an administrative command.  See below for a
                description of the commands.
Parameters      Specify parameters for those commands that need them.
Password        The administrative password.
Broker Host     The host where the broker is running.
Broker Port     The port where the broker is listening.

The administrative interface created by CreateBroker supports the following commands:

Add objects by file:
Add object(s) to the Broker. The parameter is a list of filenames that contain SOIF object to be added to the Broker.

Close log:
Flush all accumulated log information and close the current log file. Causes the Broker to stop logging. No parameters.

Compress Registry:
Performs garbage collection on the Registry file. No parameters.

Delete expired objects:
Deletes any object from the Broker whose Time-to-Live has expired. No parameters.

Delete objects by query:
Deletes any object(s) that matches the given query. The parameter is a query with the same syntax as user queries. Query flags are currently unsupported.

Delete objects by oid:
Deletes the object(s) identified by the given OID numbers. The parameter is a list of OID numbers. The OID numbers can be obtained by using the dumpregistry command.

Disable log type:
Disables logging information about a particular type of event. The parameter is an event type. See Enable log type for a list of events.

Enable log type:
Enables logging information about a particular type of events. The parameter is the name of an event type. Currently, event types are limited to the following:

Update                  Log updated objects.
Delete                  Log deleted objects.
Refresh                 Log refreshed objects.
Query                   Log user queries.
Query-Return            Log objects returned from a query. 
Cleaned                 Log objects removed by the cleaner. 
Collection              Log collection events. 
Admin                   Log administrative events. 
Admin-Return            Log the results of administrative events. 
Bulk-Transfer           Log bulk transfer events. 
Bulk-Return             Log objects sent by bulk transfers. 
Cleaner-On              Log cleaning events. 
Compressing-Registry    Log registry compression events. 
All                     Log all events.

Flush log:
Flush all accumulated log information to the current log file. No parameters.

Generate statistics:
Generates some basic statistics about the Broker object database. No parameters.

Index changes:
Index only the objects that have been added to the recently. No parameters.

Index corpus:
Index the entire object database. No parameters.

Open log:
Open a new log file. If the file does not exist, create a new one. The parameter is the name (relative to the broker) of a file to use for logging.

Restart server:
Force the broker to reread the Registry and reindex the corpus. This does not actually kill the broker process. No parameters. This is usually used only for Replica brokers.

Rotate log file:
Rotates the current log file to LOG.YYMMDD. Opens a new log file. No parameters.

Set variable:
Sets the value of a broker configuration variable. Takes two parameters, the name of a configuration variable and the new value for the variable. The configuration variables that can be set are those that occur in the broker.conf file. The change only is valid until the broker process dies.

Shutdown server:
Cleanly shutdown the Broker. No parameters.

Start collection:
Perform collections. No parameters.

Delete older objects of duplicate URLs:
Occasionally a broker may end up with multiple summarizes for individual URLs. This can happen when the Gatherer changes its description, hostname, or port number. Use this command to search the broker for duplicated URLs. When two objects with the same URL are found, the object with the least-recent timestamp is removed.

• Deleting unwanted Broker objects
  • Command-line Administration