A quick and simple guide to get Drupal 7 and Apache Solr version 3.5 or higher running on your local development machine! For the ones that have been resistant in trying out Apache Solr, this is your chance. If you are running an OSX or Unix machine you could be running Apache Solr in under 5 minutes!
Follow these simple steps and you will become a Solr Master very soon!
This guide has been made for unix and mac users. Windows users can probably use the same guide except for the example folders. If you are using Search API most of these steps are applicable to that project as well.
1. Download the Apache Solr 7.x-1.1 module from the Apachesolr module and place it in your drupal folder for contributed modules. Typically this is sites/all/contrib
2. Enable ApacheSolr and ApacheSolr Search modules in admin/build/modules
3. Download Apache Solr from a mirror near you : http://www.apache.org/dyn/closer.cgi/lucene/solr/3.5.0
4. Unpack it somewhere outside your drupal installation and outside your web root/folder. Suggestion would be ~/Servers/apache-solr-3.5
5. Go to sites/all/contrib/apachesolr/solr-conf and copy all files to ~/Servers/apache-solr-3.5/example/solr/conf
6. In ~/Servers/apache-solr-3.5/example/solr/conf you can remove schema.xml and rename schema-solr3x.xml to schema.xml. Do the same for solrconfig.xml
7. Open your command prompt and do cd ~/Servers/apache-solr-3.5/example
8. Type the following command to start the Apache Solr service
java -jar start.jar
If all went well your Solr Server is running now! Congratulations!
9. Test your solr server admin interface by visiting http://localhost:8983/solr/admin
10. Go to admin/config/search/apachesolr/settings and click on edit. Verify if the url http://localhost:8983/solr/ is correctly entered and click ok