SearXNG maintenance

How to update

How to update depends on the Installation method. If you have used the Installation Script, use the update command from the utils/searxng.sh script.

sudo -H ./utils/searxng.sh instance update

How to inspect & debug

How to debug depends on the Installation method. If you have used the Installation Script, use the inspect command from the utils/searxng.sh script.

sudo -H ./utils/searxng.sh instance inspect

Migrate and stay tuned!

SearXNG is a rolling release; each commit to the master branch is a release. SearXNG is growing rapidly, the services and opportunities are change every now and then, to name just a few:

  • Bot protection has been switched from filtron to SearXNG’s limiter, this requires a Redis database.

  • The image proxy morty is no longer needed, it has been replaced by the image proxy from SearXNG.

  • To save bandwith cache busting has been implemented. To get in use, the static-expires needs to be set in the uWSGI setup.

To stay tuned and get in use of the new features, instance maintainers have to update the SearXNG code regularly (see How to update). As the above examples show, this is not always enough, sometimes services have to be set up or reconfigured and sometimes services that are no longer needed should be uninstalled.

Hint

First of all: SearXNG is installed by the script utils/searxng.sh. If you have old filtron, morty or searx setup you should consider complete uninstall/reinstall.

Here you will find a list of changes that affect the infrastructure. Please check to what extent it is necessary to update your installations:

PR 1595: [fix] uWSGI: increase buffer-size

Re-install uWSGI (utils/searxng.sh) or fix your uWSGI searxng.ini file manually.

remove obsolete services

If your searx instance was installed “Step by step” or by the “Installation scripts”, you need to undo the installation procedure completely. If you have morty & filtron installed, it is recommended to uninstall these services also. In case of scripts, to uninstall use the scripts from the origin you installed searx from or try:

$ sudo -H ./utils/filtron.sh remove all
$ sudo -H ./utils/morty.sh   remove all
$ sudo -H ./utils/searx.sh   remove all

Hint

If you are migrate from searx take into account that the .config.sh is no longer used.

If you upgrade from searx or from before PR 1332 has been merged and you have filtron and/or morty installed, don’t forget to remove HTTP sites.

Apache:

$ sudo -H ./utils/filtron.sh apache remove
$ sudo -H ./utils/morty.sh apache remove

nginx:

$ sudo -H ./utils/filtron.sh nginx remove
$ sudo -H ./utils/morty.sh nginx remove

Check after Installation

Once you have done your installation, you can run a SearXNG check procedure, to see if there are some left overs. In this example there exists a old /etc/searx/settings.yml:

$ sudo -H ./utils/searxng.sh instance check

SearXNG checks
--------------
ERROR: settings.yml in /etc/searx/ is deprecated, move file to folder /etc/searxng/
INFO:  [OK] (old) account 'searx' does not exists
INFO:  [OK] (old) account 'filtron' does not exists
INFO:  [OK] (old) account 'morty' does not exists
...
INFO    searx.redisdb                 : connecting to Redis db=0 path='/usr/local/searxng-redis/run/redis.sock'
INFO    searx.redisdb                 : connected to Redis