Introduction
This guide is for those who want to quickly try out Fess. It describes the minimum steps required to use Fess.
The startup procedure described here is for trial purposes, so for production deployment, please refer to Installation Guide using Docker or similar methods. (Fess started with this procedure is intended for simple testing and is not recommended for production use.)
Prerequisites
Before starting Fess, please install Java 21. We recommend Eclipse Temurin for Java 21.
Download
Download the latest Fess ZIP package from the GitHub releases page.
Installation
Extract the downloaded fess-x.y.z.zip file.
$ unzip fess-x.y.z.zip
$ cd fess-x.y.z
Starting Fess
Run the fess script to start Fess. (On windows, run fess.bat)
$ ./bin/fess
Accessing the Admin UI
Access http://localhost:8080/admin. The default administrator account username/password is admin/admin.
Warning
Be sure to change the default password. In production environments, it is strongly recommended to change the password immediately after the first login.
Creating a Crawl Configuration
After logging in, click “Crawler” > “Web” in the left menu. Click the “New” button to create a web crawl configuration.
Enter the following information:
Name: Name of the crawl configuration (e.g., Company Website)
URL: URL to crawl (e.g., https://www.example.com/)
Max Access Count: Maximum number of pages to crawl
Interval: Crawl interval (milliseconds)
Running the Crawler
Click “System” > “Scheduler” in the left menu. Click the “Start Now” button for the “Default Crawler” job to start crawling immediately.
To schedule crawling, select “Default Crawler” and configure the schedule. For a start time of 10:35 am, enter 35 10 * * ? (format is “minute hour day month weekday year”). After updating, crawling will start at that time.
You can check if crawling has started in “Crawling Info”. After crawling completes, WebIndexSize information will be displayed in the session information.
Search
After crawling completes, access http://localhost:8080/ to search and view search results.
Stopping Fess
Stop the fess process with Ctrl-C or the kill command.
To Learn More
Please refer to the following documentation: