Starting Manticore in Linux

When Manticore Search is installed using DEB or RPM packages, the searchd process can be run and managed by the operating system’s init system. Most Linux versions now use systemd, while older releases use SysV init.

To check which init system your platform uses, run the following command:

ps --no-headers -o comm 1

This will display the name of the process that is running as the init process, which can be used to determine the init system in use.

Starting and stopping using systemd

After the installation the Manticore Search service is not started automatically. To start Manticore run the following command:

sudo systemctl start manticore

To stop Manticore run the following command:

sudo systemctl stop manticore

The Manticore service is set to run at boot. You can check it by running:

sudo systemctl is-enabled manticore

If you want to disable Manticore from starting at boot time, run:

sudo systemctl disable manticore

To make Manticore start at boot, run:

sudo systemctl enable manticore

In some newer operating systems, it may fail with an error “Failed to enable unit: Unit… is transient or generated.” In this case, you can remove the generator and try again. It’s unlikely you need the generator ever again after Manticore is installed.

In Debian-based operating systems run:

sudo rm /lib/systemd/system-generators/manticore-generator
sudo systemctl daemon-reload

In CentOS and RHEL run:

sudo rm /usr/lib/systemd/system-generators/manticore-search-generator
sudo systemctl daemon-reload

If you still need the generator again, just install the Manticore packages again and it will recover the generator file.

searchd process logs startup information in systemd journal. If systemd logging is enabled you can view the logged information with the following command:

sudo journalctl --unit manticore

Custom startup flags using systemd

systemctl set-environment _ADDITIONAL_SEARCHD_PARAMS allows you to specify custom startup flags that the Manticore Search daemon should be started with. See full list here.

For example, to start Manticore with the debug logging level, you can run:

systemctl set-environment _ADDITIONAL_SEARCHD_PARAMS='--logdebug'
systemctl restart manticore

To undo it, run:

systemctl set-environment _ADDITIONAL_SEARCHD_PARAMS=''
systemctl restart manticore

Note, systemd environment variables get reset on server reboot.

Starting and stopping using service

Manticore can be started and stopped using service commands:

sudo service manticore start
sudo service manticore stop

To enable the sysV service at boot on RedHat systems run:

chkconfig manticore on

To enable the sysV service at boot on Debian systems (including Ubuntu) run:

update-rc.d manticore defaults

Please note that searchd is started by the init system under the manticore user and all files created by the server will be owned by this user. If searchd is started under, for example, the root user, the file permissions will be changed, which may result in issues when running searchd as a service again.