This is a quickstart to get Omega installing and working on Debian Sarge. It assumes you're using the 0.9.6-4 or newer Xapian packages - they're in the xapian.org repository now, so if you follow the instructions below from a clean slate, you'll be fine.

Installation

You need to add those two lines to your apt's /etc/apt/sources.list.

deb http://www.xapian.org/debian stable main
deb-src http://www.xapian.org/debian stable main

Then, run apt-get update to refresh your packages lists.

Now, some packages are strongly suggested to get all features works under Omega. So run apt-get install against a few packages (these packages are suggested or recommended by the xapian-omega package so if you use a more sophisticated front-end to apt it'll suggest you might want to install them):

p-search:~# apt-get install apache2 unzip antiword libwpd-tools unrtf xpdf-utils pstotext perl

Run apt-get install on Omega's package set:

p-search:~# apt-get install xapian-omega xapian-examples xapian-tools xapian-doc

Feeding the monkey

Now let's index some RFCs.

p-search:~# mkdir /var/www/rfc
p-search:~# cd /var/www/rfc
p-search:/var/www/rfc# wget ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/tar/RFC-all.tar.gz
--00:20:37--  ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/tar/RFC-all.tar.gz
           => `RFC-all.tar.gz'
Resolving ftp.rfc-editor.org... 128.9.176.20
Connecting to ftp.rfc-editor.org[128.9.176.20]:21... connected.
Logging in as anonymous ... Logged in!
==> SYST ... done.    ==> PWD ... done.
==> TYPE I ... done.  ==> CWD /in-notes/tar ... done.
==> PASV ... done.    ==> RETR RFC-all.tar.gz ... done.
Length: 75,184,528 (unauthoritative)

100%[================================================================================>] 75,184,528     5.44M/s    ETA 00:00

00:20:50 (5.43 MB/s) - `RFC-all.tar.gz' saved [75184528]

p-search:/var/www/rfc# tar xzf RFC-all.tar.gz
tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
p-search:/var/www/rfc# time omindex --db /var/lib/xapian-omega/data/default --url /rfc /var/www/rfc
[Entering directory /]
Indexing "/rfc-index.txt" as text/plain ... added.
[...]
Indexing "/rfc999.txt" as text/plain ... added.
real    6m48.952s
user    6m40.545s
sys     0m6.636s
p-search:/var/www/rfc#

Enjoy

Now, point your favorite web browser to: http://host.example.com/cgi-bin/omega/omega

You can modify the result format by changing the FMT variable in the search request url. Example:

Default:

http://host.example.com/cgi-bin/omega/omega?P=ddd&FMT=query

XML output:

http://host.example.com/cgi-bin/omega/omega?P=ddd&FMT=xml

Godmode:

http://host.example.com/cgi-bin/omega/omega?P=ddd&FMT=godmode

Manual

Interesting files:

  • /usr/share/doc/xapian-omega/quickstart.txt
  • /usr/share/doc/xapian-omega/overview.txt.gz
  • /etc/omega.conf
  • /var/lib/xapian-omega/*