# YaCy
[](https://gitter.im/yacy/yacy_search_server?utm_source=badge& utm_medium=badge& utm_campaign=pr-badge& utm_content=badge)
[](https://travis-ci.org/yacy/yacy_search_server)
[](https://heroku.com/deploy)
## What is this?
YaCy is a search engine software. It takes a new approach to search
because it does not use a central server. Instead, its search results
come from a network of independent peers. In such a distributed network,
no single entity decides what gets listed, or in which order results appear.
The YaCy search engine runs on each user's own computer. Search terms are
hashed before they leave the user's computer. Different from conventional
search engines, YaCy is designed to protect the users' privacy.
A user's computer can create with YaCy its individual search indexes and
rankings, so that results better match what the user is looking for over time.
YaCy also makes it easy to create a customized search portal with a few clicks.
Each YaCy user is either part of a large search network (YaCy contains a
peer-to-peer network protocol to exchange search indexes with other YaCy
search engine installations) or the user runs YaCy to produce
a personal search portal that can be either public or private.
YaCy search portals can also be placed in intranet environment which makes
YaCy 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, without 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 anonymise 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 are leading to higher index capacity
and better distributed indexing performance.
## License
YaCy is published under the GPL v2
The source code is inside the release package (see /source and /htroot).
## Where is the documentation?
Documentation can be found at:
- (Home Page) https://yacy.net/
- (German Forum) http://forum.yacy.de/
- (Wiki:de) http://www.yacy-websuche.de/wiki/index.php/De:Start
- (Wiki:en) http://www.yacy-websearch.net/wiki/index.php/En:Start
- (Tutorial Videos) https://yacy.net/en/Tutorials.html and https://yacy.net/de/Lehrfilme.html
Every of these locations has a (YaCy) search functionality which combines
all these locations into one search result.
## Dependencies? What other software do I need?
You need Java 1.8 or later to run YaCy, nothing else (Java 1.7 can still be used to run the main [1.92/9000 release ](https://github.com/yacy/yacy_search_server/releases/tag/Release_1.92 ) )
Please download it from https://www.java.com
YaCy also runs on Iced Tea 3.
See https://icedtea.classpath.org
NO OTHER SOFTWARE IS REQUIRED!
(you don't need apache, tomcat or mysql or whatever)
## How do I start this software?
Startup and Shutdown of YaCy:
- on GNU/Linux and OpenBSD:
- to start: execute `./startYACY.sh`
- to stop : execute `./stopYACY.sh`
- on Windows:
- to start: double-click `startYACY.bat`
- to stop : double-click `stopYACY.bat`
- on Mac OS X:
please use the Mac Application and start or stop it like any
other Mac Application (double-click to start)
## How do I use this software, where is the administration interface?
YaCy is a build on a web server. After you started YaCy,
start your browser and open
http://localhost:8090
There you can see your personal search and administration interface.
## What if I install YaCy (headless) on a server?
You can do that but YaCy authorizes users automatically if they
access the server from the localhost. After about 10 minutes a random
password is generated and then it is not possible to log in from
a remote location. If you install YaCy on a server that is not your
workstation, then you must set an administration account immediately
after the first start-up. Open:
http://< remote-server-address > :8090/ConfigAccounts_p.html
and set an administration account.
## Can I run YaCy in a virtual machine or a container?
YaCy runs fine in virtual machines managed by software such as VirtualBox or VMware.
Container technology may be more flexible and lightweight and also works fine with YaCy.
These technologies can either be deployed locally, on remote machines you own, or in the 'cloud'. Decide what fits the most your privacy requirements.
### Docker
Deploy easily YaCy on a Docker cloud provider of your choice (can be a machine you own) with the deploy button at the top of this page.
More details for YaCy with Docker in [docker/Readme.md ](docker/Readme.md ).
### Heroku
Deploy easily on [Heroku ](https://www.heroku.com/ ) PaaS (Platform as a service) provider using the deploy button at the top.
More details for YaCy on Heroku 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 operation systems, you must first enable access to the ports you are using like:
```bash
iptables -I INPUT -m tcp -p tcp --dport 8090 -j ACCEPT
```
## How can I scale this; how much ram is needed; disk space?
YaCy can scale up to many millions of web pages in your own search index.
The default assignment of RAM is 600MB which is assigned to the java
process but not permanently used by it. The GC process will free the memory
once in a while. If you have a small index (i.e. about 100000 pages)
then you may assign _less_ memory (i.e. 200MB) but if your index scales
up to over 1 million web pages then you should start to increase the
memory assignment. Open http://localhost:8090/Performance_p.html
and set a higher/lower memory assignment.
If you have millions of web pages in your search index then you might
have gigabytes of disk space allocated. You can reduce the disk
space i.e. setting the htcache space to a different size; to do that
open http://localhost:8090/ConfigHTCache_p.html and set a new size.
## Join the development!
YaCy was created with the love of a community.
A large number of programmers have helped, please join us!
Here is a rough hint how to start developing YaCy in eclipse:
- Clone https://github.com/yacy/yacy_search_server.git
- File -> Import as Git -> Projects from Git -> Existing local repository
- -> add -> your git clone of yacy_search_server
- "Import existing Eclipse projects" -> finish
- Run -> External Tools -> External Tools Configuration -> double-click Ant Build
- -> Name: "YaCy Build" -> Buildfile: Browse Workspace -> build.xml -> Run
- In Package Explorer, right-click on yacy -> Run as -> Java Application -> Select "yacy - net.yacy" -> Ok
To join our development community, got to https://searchlab.eu
If you implemented something amazing we welcome your pull request at https://github.com/yacy/yacy_search_server
## How to get the source code and how to compile YaCy yourself?
The source code is inside 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
```
Please clone our code and help with development!
The code is licensed under the GPL v2.
Compiling YaCy:
- you need Java 1.8 or later and [Apache Ant ](https://ant.apache.org/ )
- just compile: "ant clean all" - then you can "./startYACY.sh" or "./startYACY.bat"
- create a release tarball: "ant dist"
- create a Mac OS release: "ant distMacApp" (works only on a Mac)
- create a debian release: "ant deb"
- work with eclipse: within eclipse you also need to start the ant build process
because the servlet pages are not compiled by the eclipse build process
after the dist procedure, the release can be found in the RELEASE subdirectory
Build with Maven:
- for the first time goto subdirectory libbuild (which contains the maven parent pom)
- compile with "mvn clean install -DskipTests", this will create all needed modules
- after above you can use just the pom in the main directory to build YaCy with maven
## Are there any APIs or how can I attach software at YaCy?
There are many interfaces build-in in YaCy 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 of some web pages in the YaCy web interface. Just click on it and
you will see the xml/json version of the information you just have seen at the web
page.
A different approach is the usage of 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 create more shell api access methods easily.
## Contact
Our primary point of contact is the international YaCy forum at https://searchlab.eu
We encourage you to start a discussion there in your own language.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the maintainer:
Send an email to Michael Christen (mc@yacy.net) with a meaningful subject
including the word 'yacy' to prevent that your email gets stuck
in my anti-spam filter.
If you like to have a customized version for special needs,
feel free to ask the author for a business proposal to customize YaCy
according to your needs. We also provide integration solutions if the
software is about to be integrated into your enterprise application.
Germany, Frankfurt a.M., 26.11.2011
Michael Peter Christen
