Search Service Configuration via STSADM - Part I

You could possibly do almost everything related to SharePoint 2007 administration via this useful command line utility STSADM. In this post, I am going to talk about a subset of these commands which can be used in the context of Se
arch Service.

List the search services active on a SharePoint Server

stsadm -o osearch -action list

Sample output (Assuming one Index server and two Query Servers)

Farm Contact Email:

Farm Service Account:

Farm Performance Level:

Server 1:

Status:

Role:

Server 2:

Status:

Role:

*Server 3:

Status:

Role:

This command will list down all the servers in the farm and their corresponding role (Query or Index) in the farm and their status (Online). You will also notice that an asterisk (*) is displayed against the name of one of the servers. This is just to identify on which server you are executing this command. So in the above example, based on the sample output, the command should have been executed from Server 3. You should execute this command within each of the server (query & index) in the farm. This will give you a better insight, if all the services are online.

Stopping the Search Service

stsadm -o osearch -action Stop

While executing this command, two things should be noted

1. This command should be first executed on the query Servers and then finally on Index Server (if needed)
2. Executing this command on Index server will delete the previously indexed. You will get a prompt as below

I will talk about STSADM command line to start the search service and configure it in my next blog. Keep reading! :)