Apache ManifoldCF Content Crawler

This is a repackaged open source software product wherein additional charges apply for cloudimg support services.

## Ready to Run Enterprise Content Crawling and Search

Apache ManifoldCF is an open source framework that moves content from repositories into a search index while preserving document level access control. This image delivers ManifoldCF fully installed and wired to PostgreSQL and Apache Solr as system services, so a working content crawler and search index is running within minutes of launch, with no manual database or search configuration to complete.

## Who This Is For

Teams that need to crawl enterprise content, filesystems, web sites, SharePoint, RSS feeds, relational databases and email stores, and make it searchable while enforcing source access control. If your users should only see search results they are entitled to in the source system, ManifoldCF handles that automatically.

## Key Outcomes

• Crawl and index in minutes. Define a repository connection, an output connection to Solr, and a job. ManifoldCF handles scheduling, incremental recrawl, text extraction via Tika, and per document state tracking so a re run only reprocesses what actually changed.
• Document level security built in. Authority services translate a user identity into the access tokens that user holds in the source repository. Those tokens are indexed alongside each document so a search front end filters results by entitlement without custom code.
• Zero default credentials. A first boot service rotates every credential to values unique to your instance: the crawler UI login, the JSON API password, the PostgreSQL role password and the Jetty shutdown token. No shared or default password ships in the image.
• Production network posture. ManifoldCF Jetty and Solr listen only on loopback. nginx on port 80 is the sole public surface, publishing only the crawler UI and the authenticated JSON API. The authority service endpoint is explicitly blocked at the proxy.

## Application Stack

• Apache ManifoldCF 2.30 on OpenJDK 21
• PostgreSQL 16 for crawl job and per document state
• Apache Solr 9 as the search index
• nginx reverse proxy on port 80
• PostgreSQL, the Solr index and the ManifoldCF work area each on their own dedicated data disk, independently resizable and preserved across instance replacement

## Getting Started

Browse to the instance on port 80 to reach the ManifoldCF crawler UI. Sign in with the generated administrator credentials, stored in a root only file on the instance. Define your first crawl job, or use the included self authored sample corpus to see an end to end crawl into Solr immediately. The JSON REST API under /mcf-api-service is available for automation.

## Use Cases

• Enterprise search ingestion from filesystems, SharePoint and web content
• Secure search where query results must respect source access control policies
• Building a searchable knowledge index across mixed repositories with incremental updates
• Automating content pipelines through the authenticated JSON REST API

## cloudimg Support

cloudimg provides 24/7 technical support by email and live chat. Our engineers assist with deployment, repository and output connector configuration, crawl job design, document level security, Solr tuning, PostgreSQL maintenance, backup strategy, and TLS and reverse proxy customization.

Apache, Apache ManifoldCF, Apache Solr and the Apache feather logo are trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation. All product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Use of them does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by them.