# YaCy
[](https://gitter.im/yacy/yacy_search_server?utm_source=badge& utm_medium=badge& utm_campaign=pr-badge& utm_content=badge)
[](https://github.com/yacy/yacy_search_server/actions/workflows/ant-build-selfhosted.yaml)
[](https://yacy.net/download_installation/)
[](https://heroku.com/deploy)
## What is this?
The YaCy search engine software provides results from a network of independent peers,
instead of a central server. It is a distributed network where no single entity decides
what to list or order it appears in.
User privacy is central to YaCy, and it runs on each user's computer, where search terms are
hashed before they being sent to the network. Everyone can create their individual
search indexes and rankings, and a truly customized search portal.
Each YaCy user is either part of a large search network (search indexes can be
exchanged with other installation over a built-in peer-to-peer network protocol)
or the user runs YaCy to produce a personal search portal that is either public or private.
YaCy search portals can also be placed in an intranet environment, making
it a replacement for commercial enterprise search solutions. A network
scanner makes it easy to discover all available HTTP, FTP and SMB servers.
To create a web index, YaCy has a web crawler for
everybody, free of censorship and central data retention:
- Search the web (automatically using all other YaCy peers)
- Co-operative crawling; support for other crawlers
- Intranet indexing and search
- Set up your own search portal
- All users have equal rights
- Comprehensive concept to anonymize the users' index
To be able to perform a search using the YaCy network, every user has to set up
their own node. More users means higher index capacity and better distributed
indexing performance.
## License
This project is available as open source under the terms of the GPL 2.0 or later. However, some elements are being licensed under GNU Lesser General Public License. For accurate information, please check individual files. As well as for accurate information regarding copyrights.
The (GPLv2+) source code used to build YaCy is distributed with the package (in /source and /htroot).
## Where is the documentation?
- [Homepage ](https://yacy.net )
- [International Forum ](https://community.searchlab.eu )
- [Documentation / FAQ ](https://yacy.net/faq/ )
- [English wiki ](https://wiki.yacy.net/index.php/En:Start )
- [German wiki ](https://wiki.yacy.net/index.php/De:Start )
- [Esperanto wiki ](https://wiki.yacy.net/index.php/Eo:Start )
- [French wiki ](https://wiki.yacy.net/index.php/Fr:Start )
- [Spanish wiki ](https://wiki.yacy.net/index.php/Es:Start )
- [Russian wiki ](https://wiki.yacy.net/index.php/Ru:Start )
- [Video tutorials ](https://www.youtube.com/@YaCyTutorials/videos )
- [javadoc documentation ](https://yacy.net/api/javadoc/ ) for developers
All these have (YaCy) search functionality combining all these locations into one search result.
## Dependencies? What other software do I need?
You need Java 1.8 or later to run YaCy. (No Apache, Tomcat or MySQL or anything else)
YaCy also runs on IcedTea 3.
See https://icedtea.classpath.org
## Start and stop it
Startup and shutdown:
- GNU/Linux and OpenBSD:
- Start by running `./startYACY.sh`
- Stop by running `./stopYACY.sh`
- Windows:
- Start by double-clicking `startYACY.bat`
- Stop by double-clicking `stopYACY.bat`
- macOS:
Please use the Mac app and start or stop it like any
other program (double-click to start)
## The administration interface
A web server is brought up after starting YaCy.
Open this URL in your web-browser:
http://localhost:8090
This presents you with the personal search and administration interface.
## (Headless) YaCy server installation
YaCy will authorize users automatically if they
access the server from its localhost. After about 10 minutes a random
password is generated, and then it is no longer possible to log in from
a remote location. If you install YaCy on a server that is not your
workstation you must set an admin account immediately after the first start-up.
Open:
http://< remote-server-address > :8090/ConfigAccounts_p.html
and set an admin account.
## YaCy in a virtual machine or a container
Use virtualization software like VirtualBox or VMware.
The following container technologies can deploy locally, on remote machines you own, or in the 'cloud' using a provider by clicking "Deploy" at the top of the page:
### Docker
More details in the [docker/Readme.md ](docker/Readme.md ).
### [Heroku](https://www.heroku.com/)
PaaS (Platform as a service)
More details in [Heroku.md ](Heroku.md ).
## Port 8090 is bad, people are not allowed to access that port
You can forward port 80 to 8090 with iptables:
```bash
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 8090
```
On some operating systems, access to the ports you are using must be granted first:
```bash
iptables -I INPUT -m tcp -p tcp --dport 8090 -j ACCEPT
```
## Scaling, RAM and disk space
You can have many millions web pages in your own search index.
By default, 600MB RAM is available to the Java process.
The GC process will free the memory once in a while. If you have less than
100000 pages you could try 200MB till you hit 1 million.
[Here ](http://localhost:8090/Performance_p.html ) you can adjust it.
Several million web pages may use several GB of disk space, but you can
adjust it [here ](http://localhost:8090/ConfigHTCache_p.html ) to fit your needs.
## Help develop YaCy
Join the large number of contributors that make YaCy what it is;
community software.
To start developing YaCy in **Eclipse** :
- clone https://github.com/yacy/yacy_search_server.git using build-in Eclipse features (File -> Import -> Git)
- or download source from this site (download button "Code" -> download as Zip -> and unpack)
- import a Gradle project (File -> Import -> Gradle -> Existing Gradle Project)
- in the tab "Gradle Tasks" are tasks available to use build the project (e.g. build -> build or application -> run)
To start developing YaCy in **Netbeans** :
- clone https://github.com/yacy/yacy_search_server.git (Team → Git → Clone)
- if you checked "scan for project" you'll be asked to open the project
- Open the project (File → Open Project)
- you may directly use all the Netbeans build feature.
To join our development community, got to https://community.searchlab.eu
Send pull requests to https://github.com/yacy/yacy_search_server
## Compile from source
The source code is bundled with every YaCy release. You can also get YaCy
from https://github.com/yacy/yacy_search_server by cloning the repository.
```
git clone https://github.com/yacy/yacy_search_server
```
Compiling YaCy:
- You need Java 1.8 and ant
- See `ant -p` for the available ant targets
```
ant clean dist
```
resulting tar.gz with YaCy package will be located in RELEASE/ directory.
Move it into desired location and unpack with:
```
tar zfvx yacy_v1.version_release_number_different_each_time.tar.gz
```
## APIs and attaching software
YaCy has many built-in interfaces, and they are all based on HTTP/XML and
HTTP/JSON. You can discover these interfaces if you notice the orange "API" icon in
the upper right corner of some web pages in the YaCy web interface. Click it, and
you will see the XML/JSON version of the respective webpage.
You can also use the shell script provided in the /bin subdirectory.
The shell scripts also call the YaCy web interface. By cloning some of those
scripts you can easily create more shell API access methods.
## Contact
[Visit the international YaCy forum ](https://community.searchlab.eu )
where you can start a discussion there in your own language.
Questions and requests for paid customization and integration into enterprise solutions.
can be sent to the maintainer, Michael Christen per e-mail (at mc@yacy.net)
with a meaningful subject including the word 'YaCy' to prevent it getting stuck in the spam filter.
- Michael Peter Christen
