Miscellaneous tools

indextool

indextool is a helpful utility that extracts various information about a physical table, excluding template or distributed tables. Here's the general syntax for utilizing indextool:

indextool <command> [options]

Options

These options are applicable to all commands:

  • --config <file> (-c <file> for short) lets you override the default configuration file names.
  • --quiet (-q for short) suppresses the output of banners and such by indextool.
  • --help (-h for short) displays all parameters available in your specific build of indextool.
  • -v displays the version information of your specific indextool build.

Commands

Here are the available commands:

  • --checkconfig loads and verifies the config file, checking its validity and for any syntax errors.
  • --buildidf DICTFILE1 [DICTFILE2 ...] --out IDFILE constructs an IDF file from one or more dictionary dumps (refer to --dumpdict). The additional parameter --skip-uniq will omit unique words (df=1).
  • --build-infixes TABLENAME generates infixes for a pre-existing dict=keywords table (updates .sph, .spi in place). Use this option for legacy table files already employing dict=keywords, but now requiring infix search support; updating the table files with indextool may be simpler or quicker than recreating them from scratch with indexer.
  • --dumpheader FILENAME.sph promptly dumps the given table header file without disturbing any other table files or even the config file. The report offers a detailed view of all the table settings, especially the complete attribute and field list.
  • --dumpconfig FILENAME.sph extracts the table definition from the specified table header file in an (almost) manticore.conf file-compliant format.
  • --dumpheader TABLENAME dumps table header by table name while searching for the header path in the config file.
  • --dumpdict TABLENAME dumps the dictionary. An extra -stats switch will add the total document count to the dictionary dump. This is necessary for dictionary files used in IDF file creation.
  • --dumpdocids TABLENAME dumps document IDs by table name.
  • --dumphitlist TABLENAME KEYWORD dumps all instances (occurrences) of a specified keyword in a given table, with the keyword defined as text.
  • --dumphitlist TABLENAME --wordid ID dumps all instances (occurrences) of a specific keyword in a given table, with the keyword represented as an internal numeric ID.
  • --docextract TBL DOCID executes a standard table check pass of the entire dictionary/docs/hits, and gathers all the words and hits associated with the requested document. Subsequently, all the words are arranged according to their fields and positions, and the result is printed, grouped by field.
  • --fold TABLENAME OPTFILE This option helps understand how the tokenizer processes input. You can supply the indextool with text from a file, if specified, or from stdin otherwise. The output will replace separators with spaces (based on your charset_table settings) and convert letters in words to lowercase.
  • --htmlstrip TABLENAME applies the HTML stripper settings for a specified table to filter stdin, and sends the filtering results to stdout. Be aware that the settings will be fetched from manticore.conf, and not from the table header.
  • --mergeidf NODE1.idf [NODE2.idf ...] --out GLOBAL.idf combines multiple .idf files into a single one. The extra parameter --skip-uniq will ignore unique words (df=1).
  • --morph TABLENAME applies morphology to the given stdin and directs the result to stdout.
  • --check TABLENAME evaluates the table data files for consistency errors that could be caused by bugs in indexer or hardware faults. --check is also functional on RT tables, RAM, and disk chunks. Additional options:
    • --check-id-dups assesses for duplicate ids
    • --check-disk-chunk CHUNK_NAME checks only a specific disk chunk of an RT table. The argument is the numeric extension of the RT table's disk chunk to be checked.
  • --strip-path removes the path names from all file names referred to from the table (stopwords, wordforms, exceptions, etc). This is helpful when verifying tables built on a different machine with possibly varying path layouts.
  • --rotate is only compatible with --check and determines whether to check the table waiting for rotation, i.e., with a .new extension. This is useful when you wish to validate your table before actually putting it into use.
  • --apply-killlists loads and applies kill-lists for all tables listed in the config file. Changes are saved in .SPM files. Kill-list files (.SPK) are removed. This can be handy if you want to shift the application of tables from server startup to indexing stage.

spelldump

The spelldump command is designed to retrieve the contents from a dictionary file that employs the ispell or MySpell format. This can be handy when you need to compile word lists for wordforms, as it generates all possible forms for you.

Here's the general syntax:

spelldump [options] <dictionary> <affix> [result] [locale-name]

The primary parameters are the main file and the affix file of the dictionary. Typically, these are named as [language-prefix].dict and [language-prefix].aff, respectively. You can find these files in most standard Linux distributions or from numerous online sources.

The [result] parameter is where the extracted dictionary data will be stored, and [locale-name] is the parameter used to specify the locale details of your choice.

There's an optional -c [file] option as well. This option allows you to specify a file for case conversion details.

Here are some usage examples:

spelldump en.dict en.aff
spelldump ru.dict ru.aff ru.txt ru_RU.CP1251
spelldump ru.dict ru.aff ru.txt .1251

The resulting file will list all the words from the dictionary, arranged alphabetically and formatted like a wordforms file. You can then modify this file as per your specific requirements. Here's a sample of what the output file might look like:

zone > zone
zoned > zoned
zoning > zoning

wordbreaker

The wordbreaker tool is designed to deconstruct compound words, a common feature in URLs, into their individual components. For instance, it can dissect "lordoftherings" into four separate words or break down http://manofsteel.warnerbros.com into "man of steel warner bros". This ability enhances search functionality by eliminating the need for prefixes or infixes. To illustrate, a search for "sphinx" wouldn't yield "sphinxsearch" in the results. However, if you apply wordbreaker to disassemble the compound word and index the detached elements, a search will be successful without the file size expansion associated with prefix or infix usage in full-text indexing.

Here are some examples of how to use wordbreaker:

echo manofsteel | bin/wordbreaker -dict dict.txt split
man of steel

The -dict dictionary file is used to separate the input stream into individual words. If no dictionary file is specified, Wordbreaker will look for a file named wordbreaker-dict.txt in the current working directory. (Ensure that the dictionary file matches the language of the compound word you're working with.) The split command breaks words from the standard input and sends the results to the standard output. The test and bench commands are also available to assess the splitting quality and measure the performance of the splitting function, respectively.

Wordbreaker uses a dictionary to identify individual substrings within a given string. To distinguish between multiple potential splits, it considers the relative frequency of each word in the dictionary. A higher frequency indicates a higher likelihood for a word split. To generate a file of this nature, you can use the indexer tool:

indexer --buildstops dict.txt 100000 --buildfreqs myindex -c /path/to/manticore.conf

which will produce a text file named dict.txt that contains the 100,000 most frequently occurring words from myindex, along with their respective counts. Since this output file is a simple text document, you have the flexibility to manually edit it whenever needed. Feel free to add or remove words as required.

OpenAPI specification

The Manticore Search API is documented using the OpenAPI specification, which can be used to generate client SDKs. The machine-readable YAML file is available at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/manticoresoftware/openapi/master/manticore.yml

You can also view the specification visualized with the online Swagger Editor here.

Telemetry

At Manticore, we gather various anonymized metrics to enhance the quality of our products, including Manticore Search. By analyzing this data, we can not only improve the overall performance of our product but also identify which features would be most beneficial to prioritize in order to provide even more value to our users. The telemetry system operates on a separate thread in a non-blocking mode, taking snapshots and sending them once every few minutes.

We take your privacy seriously, and you can rest assured that all metrics are completely anonymous and no sensitive information is transmitted. However, if you still wish to disable telemetry, you have the option to do so by:

  • Setting the environment variable TELEMETRY=0
  • Or setting telemetry = 0 in the section searchd of your configuration file

Here is a list of all the metrics we collect:

Metric Description
collector 🏷 buddy. Indicates that this metric is collected through Manticore Buddy
os_name 🏷️ Name of the operating system
machine_id 🏷 Server identifier (the content of /etc/machine-id in Linux)
manticore_version 🏷️ Version of Manticore
columnar_version 🏷️ Version of the Columnar library if it is installed
secondary_version 🏷️ Version of the secondary library if the Columnar library is installed
buddy_version 🏷️ Version of Manticore Buddy
invocation Sent when Manticore Buddy is launched
show_queries Indicates that the show queries command was executed
backup Indicates that the backup query was executed
insert_query Indicates that the auto schema logic was executed
command_* All metrics with this prefix are sent from the show status query of the Manticore daemon
uptime The uptime of the Manticore Search daemon
workers_total The number of workers used by Manticore
cluster_* Cluster-related metrics from the show status results
table_*_count The number of tables created for each type: plain, percolate, rt, or distributed
field_count The count for each field type for tables with rt and percolate types
columnar Indicates that the Columnar library was used
columnar_field_count The number of fields that use the Columnar library

Backup metrics

The Manticore backup tool sends anonymized metrics to the Manticore metrics server by default in order to help improve the product. If you don't want to send telemetry, you can disable it by running the tool with the --disable-metric flag or by setting the environment variable TELEMETRY=0.

The following is a list of all collected metrics:

Metric Description
collector 🏷 backup. Indicates that this metric comes from the backup tool
os_name 🏷️ Name of the operating system
machine_id 🏷 Server identifier (the content of /etc/machine-id in Linux)
backup_version 🏷️ Version of the backup tool used
manticore_version 🏷️ Version of Manticore
columnar_version 🏷️ Version of Columnar library if installed
secondary_version 🏷️ Version of the secondary library if Columnar library is installed
invocation Sent when backup was initiated
failed Sent in case of failed backup
done Sent when backup/restore is successful
arg_* The arguments used to run the tool (excluding index names, etc.)
backup_store_versions_fails Indicates failure in saving Manticore version in the backup
backup_table_count Total number of backed up tables
backup_no_permissions Failed backup due to insufficient permissions to destination directory
backup_total_size Total size of the full backup
backup_time Duration of the backup
restore_searchd_running Failed to run restore process due to searchd already running
restore_no_config_file No config file found in the backup during restore
restore_time Duration of the restore
fsync_time Duration of fsync
restore_target_exists Occurs when a folder or index already exists in the destination folder for restore
terminations Indicates that the process was terminated
signal_* The signal used to terminate the process
tables Number of tables in Manticore
config_unreachable Specified configuration file does not exist
config_data_dir_missing Failed to parse data_dir from specified configuration file
config_data_dir_is_relative data_dir path in Manticore instance's configuration file is relative