NetWare Web Search Server

Although Web Search Server isn't a required Web service for NetWare 6.5, it is all about making your Web resources available to employees and customers as quickly and accurately as possible. Supporting everything from simple internal search solutions to complex search services that you can offer to organizations for a fee, Web Search Server is one of the fastest and most accurate search engines currently available.

Web Search Server offers a powerful, full-text search engine that you can use to add search capabilities to your Internet or intranet Web sites. Compatible with the Apache Web server, you can create custom search forms and search result pages either from scratch or by using the included templates.

This section introduces you to Web Search Server and its basic installation and configuration. However, for comprehensive information, see the NetWare 6.5 online documentation.

Web Search Server Capabilities

With NetWare Web Search Server, you can

  • Support searching multiple language indexes from a single interface

  • Host search services for multiple organizations

  • Organize collections of related files from diverse sources as a single document

  • Create custom search and print results and error and response messages and apply them to individual language searches or across all supported languages

  • Gather customer metrics by reviewing searches to identify what your customers look for the most

  • Improve employee productivity by helping them find information more quickly

Installing Web Search Server

NetWare Web Search Server can be installed as an optional component during the NetWare 6.5 installation, or it can be installed after the fact through iManager or the graphical server console.

To install Web Search Server using iManager, complete the following steps:

  1. Insert the NetWare 6.5 Operating System CD-ROM into your workstation.

  2. Launch iManager and open the Install and Upgrade link in the left navigation frame.

  3. Select Install NetWare 6.5 Products, and then click Remote Product Install in the right frame.

  4. At the Target Server screen, select the server to which you want to install Web Search Server and click Next . Authenticate as an Admin user for your eDirectory tree and click OK.

  5. At the components screen, click Clear All and select only NetWare Web Search Server. Click Next.

  6. At the Summary screen, click Copy Files. You will be prompted to insert the NetWare 6.5 Products CD-ROM. After the Web Search Server files are copied , click Close to complete the installation.

Once the installation is complete, restart the NetWare 6.5 server where Web Search Server is installed.

Web Search Basics

Before you get started creating and managing search sites, you should understand the basics of Web searches. Web searches are driven by the idea of a search site . By definition, a search site is a collection of one or more indexes and their related configuration files. A typical search site consists of the following:

  • Indexes: Indexes are at the heart of a search site. An index is an optimized binary file that contains keywords found in documents hosted on a Web or file server. Indexes are used by Web Search to return search results to users.

    NOTE

    When you install NetWare Web Search Server, some of your server's content is automatically indexed and appears on the default search form as the "NetWare Web Search" and "Doc Root" indexes.


  • Log files: A log file keeps record of search statistics and performance of the search site.

  • Search and print templates: These are templates that become populated with the results of a search and then are displayed to the user. Depending on which templates are used, the level of detail displayed in search and print results varies.

  • Scheduled events: Index management, such as updating or regenerating, can be automated to occur at specific intervals using the Scheduling feature.

  • Themes: A theme instantly adds a common look and feel to your search page, search and print results pages, and response and error message pages.

Testing Web Search

Once you start Web Search Server, you can open the search page using your Web browser and perform a search against the content that has been automatically indexed. To test NetWare Web Search Server using the default search page, do the following:

  1. Point your browser to the default search page at http://< server DNS name of IP address >/novellsearch . Remember that the URL is case sensitive. For example:

    http://prv-serv1.quills.com/novellsearch

  2. In the Search field, type NetWare and click Search.

The results of this search will be collected from the newly created index in Web Search Server.

Working with Web Search Server

Once installed, you can manage Web Search Server through Web Search Manager. That way, Web Search Manager is available from NetWare 6.5 Web Manager. To open Web Search Manager, launch Web Manager and select Web Search 3.0 in the left navigation frame. Then click the Web Search Administration link in the right frame. The Web Search Manager interface is shown in Figure 9.6.

Figure 9.6. Web Search Manager interface.

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The default Web Search Manager page is also what you get when you click List in the left navigation frame. There are four primary tasks associated with configuring and managing Web Search Server:

  • Creating a search site

  • Creating and managing indexes

  • Generating indexes

  • Scheduling index events

Each of these is described in the following sections.

Creating a Search Site

Using Web Search Manager, you can create and configure search sites, also called virtual search servers , and then begin adding indexes to them. To create a new search site, click the Add button in the header frame, or select Add under the Virtual Search Server heading in the left navigation frame. The Add Site page is shown in Figure 9.7. Provide the following information:

  • Name: Specify a name for the new search site. This is typically the DNS or domain name of your server. When Web Search Server receives a query, it must determine which of the available search sites it should use to handle the request. There are two ways to do this:

    • Matching the domain name in the search query with a search site name in Web Search

    • Using the SITE= searchsitename query parameter to find matching search site names

  • Aliases: Specify a secondary name for the search site. This is typically the IP address of your server. An alias name typically follows one of two conventions:

    • An IP address could be used either in the domain name portion of a URL or be included in a search query using the &site query parameter. Using an IP address in place of a domain name to select a search site works only in a hardware virtual server configuration where each search site has its own unique IP address. For more information on virtual Web servers, see the discussion on Apache Web server earlier in this chapter.

    • Any other numeric or textual value that can be passed as the value of the &site query parameter.

  • Location: Specify the path to where you want the index and configuration files to be stored. If this field is left blank, Web Search will store the search site files in SYS:NSEARCH\SITES\< NAME > , where <NAME> is the name you have assigned to this search site. The location can be set to any volume on the server where Web Search is installed, but not on other servers.

Figure 9.7. Adding a new search site in Web Search Manager.

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Creating and Managing Indexes

Web Search Server supports two types of indexes:

  • Crawled: Follows hypertext links until it reaches a dead end. Web Search Server can crawl one or more Web sites, specific areas of a Web site, or specific URLs, all the way down to specific filenames.

  • File system: Indexes content on a file server. Web Search can index one or more paths on multiple volumes , including Storage Area Network (SAN) systems.

There are two forms you can use to create each type of index: the standard form and the advanced form. The standard form is discussed here. For information about the advanced form, see the NetWare 6.5 online documentation.

Web Search Server can search across multiple indexes within a single search site, but cannot search across multiple search sites.

TIP

Searching a single index is generally faster than searching across multiple indexes.


To create a new crawled index, complete the following steps:

  1. Launch Web Search Manager and select List in the left navigation frame. Click the Manage button next to the site for which you want to create an index.

  2. In the Define a New Index box, select New Crawled Index and click Define Index.

  3. In the Define Crawled Index screen, provide the required information and click Apply Settings.

    • Index name: Specify a name for the new index. The name can be a word, phrase, or a numeric value. If you are going to have a large number of indexes, you should use a naming scheme so that you can effectively manage your indexes. Keep in mind that the index name will be visible to users, so you might want to choose a name that will mean something to them.

    • URL of Web site: Specify the URL of the Web site you want to index. You can enter a URL by itself or include a path down to a specific file level. The standard index form includes two URL fields. Click Add more URLs to specify more than two URLs to be indexed.

To create a new file system index, complete the following steps:

  1. Launch Web Search Manager and select List in the left navigation frame. Click the Manage button next to the site for which you want to create an index.

  2. In the Define a New Index box, select New File System Index and click Define Index.

  3. In the Define File System Index screen, provide the required information and click Apply Settings.

    • Index name: Specify a name for the new index. The name can be a word, phrase, or a numeric value. If you are going to have a large number of indexes, you should use a naming scheme so that you can effectively manage your indexes. Keep in mind that the index name will be visible to users, so you might want to choose a name that will mean something to them.

    • Server path to be indexed: Specify the absolute path to the folder containing the information that you want indexed; for example, SYS:\MARKETING\COLLATERAL .

    • Corresponding URL prefix: Specify the URL that should be used by the search results page to access the individual files. This corresponds to a document directory (Document Root) that has been defined on the Web server. For more information on document directories, see the discussion on Apache Web Server earlier in this chapter.

You can specify multiple paths for a single index by clicking Add More Paths.

Generating Indexes

Once you define an index, you must generate it before it can be used for searching. This is the actual process of examining Web site content or Web server files to gather keywords, titles, and descriptions and to place them in the index file.

To generate a newly defined index, complete the following steps:

  1. Launch Web Search Manager and select List in the left navigation frame. Click Manage next to the search site for which you want to generate an index.

  2. Click Generate next to the specific index that you want to generate.

At the Active Jobs screen, you will see the status of the current indexing jobs. If there is no current index job, the status page will read No indexing jobs are currently running or defined . To cancel the current indexing jobs, click the Cancel link in the Status column.

Scheduling Index Events

Web Search Server can automatically update your indexes on specific dates and times by scheduling events. To configure an automatic generation event, complete the following steps:

  1. Launch Web Search Manager and select List in the left navigation frame. Click Manage next to the search site for which you want to schedule an indexing operation.

  2. Select Scheduling in the left navigation frame and click Add Event.

  3. At the Schedule a New Event screen, provide the required information and click Apply Settings.

    • Dates, days of week, and time: Specify the month, days, days of the week, or time (in hours and minutes) when you want Web Search Server to run the event. You can use the Ctrl and Shift keys to select multiple dates and times.

    • Operation: Select the type of operation you want performed on your indexes. Update will add any new content from the Web site or file system to the index file. Optimize will remove unnecessary content and make the index file smaller and faster. Regenerate replaces the existing index with a new one.

    • Perform operations on: Determine whether you want the chosen operation performed on all indexes (collections) in the search site, or only on specified indexes. If you have large indexes, it might be best to create multiple events to update indexes at different times.

Once the schedule is configured, the index will be automatically updated at the frequency specified in the schedule.

Managing Web Search Server

Services settings give the Web Search Server administrator global control over the search services provided by NetWare Web Search Server, including the capability to completely disable searching. These pages also control overall performance of the Web Search Server.

Services settings are organized under the Services Settings heading in the left Navigation frame. There are four categories of services settings available for Web Search Server.

General

General service settings define error log and site list settings for all search sites. The General services Settings page is shown in Figure 9.8.

  • Product Update Settings: This option lets you automatically receive notifications of updates to Web Search Server software as they become available.

  • Error Log Settings: The following settings let you configure the error log on Web Search Server.

    • Log Errors To: Select where you want log results displayed. You can choose to log errors to a file, to the console, or both. Click the View Log button to see the error log directly from Web Search Manager.

    • New Log When Services Load: When set to Yes, this option starts a new log file each time you restart the Web Search Server.

    • Maximum Log Size (Bytes): Limit the size of the log file to the size you specify (in bytes).

  • Email Settings: These settings allow you to set up email notifications for errors that occur on Web Search Server.

    • Enable Email Services: Enables/disables email notifications for Web Search Server. Note that this is a global setting that affects all search sites configured in Web Search Server.

    • Outgoing SMTP Hostname: Specify the DNS name of the outgoing SMTP mail server.

    • Outgoing SMTP Port #: Specify the port to which the SMTP mail server is listening. Default: port 25 .

    • Outgoing SMTP User ID (conditional): If the SMTP server requires authentication, specify a valid user ID for use by Web Search Server here.

    • Outgoing SMTP Password (conditional): If the SMTP server requires authentication, provide the password associated with the user ID provided for use by Web Search Server.

  • Server Management Settings: The following settings define some general characteristics of the Web Search Server:

    • Maximum Number of Active Index Jobs: Limits the number of indexing jobs that can run at the same time. Default is 5.

    • Default Location of Virtual Search Servers: Specifies the path to where you want all search site files to be stored, including index and configuration files. Changing this setting won't move existing sites to a new location, but all new search sites will be placed here.

    • Detect Manual Search Server Changes: When set to Yes, this option directs Web Search Server to reload configuration files that are modified manually, instead of using Web Search Manager.

    • Seconds Between Checking for Changes: Specifies how often Web Search Server will look for manually modified configuration files, in seconds.

    • Detect Template Changes: When set to Yes, this option directs Web Search Server to automatically check for modifications to search, print, or error templates used by Web Search Server.

    • Seconds Between Checking for Template Changes: Specifies how often Web Search Server should reload search, print, results, and error templates, in seconds. Any changes to templates will be recognized within the time period specified here.

Figure 9.8. General Service Settings page in Web Search Manager.

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When you are done making changes, click Apply Settings.

Search

Search service settings let you turn search capabilities on or off and manage debugging and statistics settings. The Search service settings are shown in Figure 9.9.

  • General Search Settings: These settings let you enable/disable the primary search features of Web Search Server:

    • Enable Search Service: Enables search services for all search sites on the Web Search Server.

    • Enable Highlighter Service: This option configures Web Search Server to highlight instances of the search term or phrase within the searched documents.

  • Debug Settings: These settings let you keep a log of all searches and query results going to all search sites. Typically, this option is used only when troubleshooting a problem with a search because the log file can grow very quickly.

    • Enable Search Debugging: Enables/disables debugging of searches.

    • Log Debug Messages To: Specifies whether debug messages should be logged to a file, to the server console, or both. Server console messages are viewable from the view them from the Tomcat servlet container console screen.

    • New Log When Servlet Loads: Specifying Yes will restart the debug file whenever Web Search Server is restarted.

    • Maximum Log Size (Bytes): Specifies the size of the debug file, in bytes.

  • Statistics Settings: Search statistics can provide you with information that can help you optimize Web Search Server over time to improve search performance.

    • Enable Search Statistics Logging: When set to Yes, this setting generates an updated log file containing statistics about searches performed against all search sites on your Web Search Server.

    • Seconds Between Statistics Updates: Specifies the time, in seconds, between updates of the statistics log file.

    • Log Statistics To: Specifies whether statistics log messages should be logged to a file, to the server console, or both. Server console messages are viewable from the Tomcat servlet container console screen.

    • Maximum Log Size (Bytes): Specifies the size of the statistics log file, in bytes.

    • New Log When Servlet Loads: Specifying Yes will restart the statistics log file whenever Web Search Server is restarted.

    • Log Error If Search Time Exceeds (Seconds): Specifies the timeout, in seconds, before Web Search Server should record the current search as exceeding the specified time limit on the statistics display.

Figure 9.9. Search Service Settings page in Web Search Manager.

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When you are done making changes, click Apply Settings.

Print

This page manages Print services and has the same type of options and parameters described in the Search section. Click Apply Settings to save any changes you make to this page.

Synchronization

Web Search Synchronization lets you manage multiple Web Search Servers from a single administration interface. Changes made to one server are automatically replicated to the other servers in the cluster. You can also synchronize Web Search files across multiple Web Search Servers, including generated indexes, configuration settings, and search results templates. For more information on using Web Search Synchronization, see the NetWare 6.5 online documentation.

Managing Search Sites

The default site settings define characteristics for search sites that are created on Web Search Server. Changes to the parameters defined on these pages will be automatically applied to any new search sites that are created, unless overridden through the use of the Advanced Index definition form.

In this way, you can manage your search sites by exception, rather than by having to define every setting for every site manually when it is created. There are five categories of default site settings, which are detailed in the following sections.

General

General settings let you manage query, response, and error log settings for all newly created search sites. The general default site settings are shown in Figure 9.10.

  • Default Query Encoding: Specifies an encoding that represents the character set encoding that most of your user queries will use. Default is UTF-8.

  • Maximum Query Duration (Seconds): Specifies the maximum duration of any query, in seconds. Any query that reaches this limit will terminate whether or not the query has actually finished. Default is 30 seconds. This option helps you protect server resources from malicious rogue searches, which are intended to slow site performance by consuming server resources.

  • Enable Stop-Words Processing: This option instructs Web Search Server to ignore insignificant search words (stop-words), such as articles, conjunctions, or prepositions. A list of common stop words is configured by default, but you can modify the list by clicking Edit List.

  • Enable Synonym-Enhanced Search Results: This option lets search users expand their search results to include synonyms of the original search terms. This is kind of like doing a Thesaurus search that can help uncover related information using similar, but not exact, words to those being searched for. You can modify the synonym list by clicking Edit List.

  • Default Encoding for Response Pages: Specifies the encoding Web Search Server will use when responding to user queries with Search and Print Results templates, and Error and Response Messages templates. Default is Unicode (UTF-8).

  • Refuse Queries If Potential Hits Exceed: Specifies the maximum effective size of a search for Web Search Server. Use this field to cancel the processing of search results that might take a long time to complete because a large number of hits are being returned. Users should modify their queries in this case.

  • Maximum Log Size (Bytes): Specifies the maximum size, in bytes, to which Web Search Server will allow the log file to grow. This protects your server hard drive resources, particularly on a busy search server.

Figure 9.10. Default general settings in Web Search Manager.

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When you are done making changes, click Apply Settings.

Search

Search default site settings let you turn search capabilities on or off and manage debugging and statistics settings. The Default search settings are shown in Figure 9.11.

  • Query Settings: These options let you configure some additional features to improve search performance and usability:

    • Enable Search Term Redirection: Lets you set up common search terms to go to a specific URL. For example, the term programming might take a user straight to your Developer Web site.

    • Enable Best Bets Search Results: Enables/disables Best Bets. Best Bets are common search destinations that can be displayed in addition to a user's specific results. They are generated from a special index just for that purpose.

    • Show Best Bets Searches by Default: Enables/disables showing Best Bets by default.

    • Maximum Number of Best Bets Results: Specifies the number of Best Bets results to display.

  • Response Settings: These options configure the default format for replying to a search request.

    • Default Number of Results to Display: Specifies the number of search results that will be displayed on each search results page.

    • Maximum Number of Results Per Page: Sets a limit on the number of results allowed on any results page.

    • Highest Allowed Result Number: Specifies the maximum number of results that will be returned for any query.

    • Enable Search Terms Highlighter: Specifies whether the search term highlighter is a default option for search sites configured on this Web Search Server.

  • Template Settings: Sets basic information about the template used by Web Search Server.

    • Templates Directory: Specifies the location of the Web Search Server templates files. The default path is SYS:\Nsearch\Templates .

    • Default Encoding for Templates: Specifies the character set in which your templates are written. This is a default value that will be used with templates that do not specify a specific encoding.

    • Default Search Page Template: Specifies the name of the search page template file you want to use.

    • Default Search Results Template: Specifies the name of the search results template file you want to use.

    • Default Highlighter Template: Specifies the name of the highlighter template file you want to use.

    • Template to Use If No Results Returned: Specifies the name of the template file to be used if no results are found.

    • Template to Use If Error Occurs: Specifies the name of the template file to be used if there are errors while processing a query.

Figure 9.11. Default search settings in Web Search Manager.

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When you are done making changes, click Apply Settings.

Print

The default print settings let you manage print results templates and parameters that affect result printing. The Print Settings page is shown in Figure 9.12.

  • Print Result Settings: These options let you configure some basic print settings for the Web Search Server environment:

    • Default Number of Results to Print: Specifies the number of print results that you want displayed on each print results page.

    • Maximum Number of Results to Print: Sets a limit on the number of results allowed on any results page.

    • Highest Allowed Result Number: Specifies the maximum number of results that will be returned for any query.

    • Maximum Print Job Size (Bytes): Specifies the largest allowable print job size, in bytes. Any request for a print job larger than this value will receive an error message.

    • Print Job Size Warning (Bytes): When a print job exceeds the specified size, in bytes, Web Search Server will send a warning message to the user via the ResponseMessageTemplate.html file. It then prompts the user to confirm the print job before continuing.

  • Template Settings: These settings provide the same type of information described previously in the section on Search settings.

Figure 9.12. Default Print Settings in Web Search Manager.

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When you are done making changes, click Apply Settings.

Index

The index default site settings make the process of creating indexes easier by letting you configure common default settings. The Index default site settings are shown in Figure 9.13.

  • General Settings: These options define the basic default features for indexes used by Web Search Server.

    • Index Type: Specifies the default index as either Crawled or File System.

    • Obey Robots.txt Exclusions When Crawling: Enable this option to have Web Search Server obey instructions in a Robots file. The Robots.txt file lets a Web site administrator specify URLs that should not be indexed by a search engine.

    • Crawl Dynamic URLs (URLs Containing '?'): Enable this option if you want Web Search Server to crawl and index dynamically generated Web pages as well as standard static Web pages. Indexes are sometimes less effective with dynamic pages because the content can change at any time.

    • URLs Are Case Sensitive: Check this box if you want Web Search Server to distinguish between URLs that are different only in character case. Leaving this unchecked can help indexing duplicate information that comes from URLs that use different cases but point to the same information.

    • Maximum Index Depth (Number of URL Hops or Sub-Directories from the Starting Point): Specifies the maximum number of hypertext links from the starting URL that Web Search Server will follow before it stops indexing.

    • Maximum File Size to Index (Bytes): Specifies the largest file, in bytes, that Web Search Server will index.

    • Maximum Time to Download a URL (Seconds): Specifies the maximum time, in seconds, that Web Search Server will attempt to download a URL before it bypasses indexing of that URL.

    • Delay Between URL Requests (Milliseconds): Specifies the amount of time Web Search Server should pause between requests for URLs that it is trying to index.

    • Encoding (If Not in META Tags): Specifies the encoding to be used when indexing files that do not contain an encoding specification. Usually, HTML files will specify their encoding with a Content-Type META tag.

  • Synchronization Settings: Enable this option if you want this index to be copied to other Web Search Servers in the synchronization cluster.

  • Rights-Based Search Results: These options let you restrict the ability to search sites with sensitive information. If users have rights to the restricted directory, they can perform a search against that data. If not, their request is denied .

  • Authorization Checking: To enable rights-based searches, select By Index and specify the file to be used in verifying user access. Make sure you assign the appropriate user rights to that file. For more information on NetWare file rights, see Chapter 6.

  • Unauthorized Hits Filtered By: Specify how unauthorized search requests are handled. Selecting Engine performs the index search, but will prevent users from seeing any of the restricted results without first logging in. Selecting Template will force users to log in before the index search will be performed.

Figure 9.13. Default index settings in Web Search Manager.

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When you are done making changes, click Apply Settings.

Security

Default security settings manage access to indexed content by requiring users to authenticate to a server before seeing rights-protected search results. The security default site settings are shown in Figure 9.14.

  • Rights-Based Search Results: These options let you configure search results based on the rights granted to the user who is performing the search:

    • Default Search Contexts: Specify default context(s) for Web Search Server to search for user information. This way, users have to provide only their common name and not their fully qualified User ID.

    • Check Authorization by Directory: Enabling this option lets Web Search Server speed up the authorization process by allowing a user who has rights to any file in a directory access to all files in that directory. This way, each file doesn't have to be authorized separately.

    • Authentication Realm String: Defines the responsible authentication system accepted by Web Search Server. By default, Web Search Server will perform authentication itself, but you can set the Apache server authentication realm string in this field, so users who authenticate to NetWare Enterprise Web server won't have to authenticate again when using Web Search Server to search and access protected information.

  • Connection Settings: These options provide additional security to Web searches:

    • Require HTTPS: Select Yes if you want to protect usernames and passwords via SSL as they are sent across the network or Internet.

    • Auto-Logout Time (Minutes): Specifies the amount of time, in minutes, that users can be idle before they are logged out of Web Search Server.

Figure 9.14. Default security settings in Web Search Manager.

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When you are done making changes, click Apply Settings.



Novell NetWare 6. 5 Administrator's Handbook
Novell NetWare 6.5 Administrators Handbook
ISBN: 0789729849
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 172

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