You do need to be careful with this because if a writer commits while you are copying you can easily get a copy that's unusable (is missing files).
When you instantiate an IndexReader, it actually holds open most files that it uses which protects them from being deleted. So in theory if you could open a reader successfully, ask it which files it is using, then copy those files. Hmmm actually some files it does not hold open (eg the *.del files, and the segments_N file) which means this approach won't work. Also on Unix the filenames disappear even though the underlying files are still held open. One way that would work is to use the new custom deletion policy feature. Unfortunately, this is not yet released (only available on trunk). The idea is fairly simple. Make your own deletion policy which at normal times (no backup running) is the default policy (delete all but the last commit point). Then, when you want to start a backup, this policy would mark the one commit point its now on as not deletable. This ensures the writer will not remove any of its files, even as new commits are being done. Then, your backup copies these files off, and it's OK if this takes a while (eg if it runs with low priority or something) since writer won't delete the files. Finally when backup is done, the deletion policy lets that commit point be deleted again and writer will remove its files. This should allow you to do "live" (not pause indexing) backups of a Lucene index, cross platform. Mike "Otis Gospodnetic" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Here is one way to do it: > You can read/open an index at any point, even when it's being modified. > You can then open a new FSDirectory pointing to a new directory and add > your original FSDirectory to that new FSDirectory. That will copy the > index. Of course, any new documents you add to the original index after > you've opened it will not be copied. The same goes for any documents > that were still buffered in memory when you opened the index, and were > not yet flushed to disk. > > See also: > http://www.mail-archive.com/lucene-user@jakarta.apache.org/msg12709.html > > Otis > > > > ----- Original Message ---- > From: "Rajendranath, Divya" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: java-user@lucene.apache.org > Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 12:06:12 PM > Subject: Copy index while updating the index > > Hello, > > I have a scenario, where we need to set up our application, that uses > Lucene (and has on-demand indexing of documents) in Disaster-recovery > site. > > The simple files/attachments used by our application can be simply > copied to the DR site just by syncing (manual copying). > > Yes, we can also copy the index directory, but problem arises when we > have copy the index directory, while the index directory is being > updated, that means the Index is open. > > Wont this corrupt the index directory. > > Does Lucene 2.0 have support for copying opened index directory, without > corrupting it. > > Please do let me know. > > > Thanks, > Divya. > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]