Questions not appearing after a Rebuild from scratch of the Index. Do I need to restore?
Asked by Quinn Cervantes-Prevo:

We had issues where only some of the questions weren't appearing in some of our spaces. We attempted to complete a UI driven rebuild of the content index, and that failed due to an OOM received. It was decided to adjust our heap and rebuild from scratch our content index. Now we can only see \~15 questions overall. We see there are questions that have been asked, and the only way to view those old ones, is if there is a direct link reference elsewhere in a page.

Should we restore our index directory or question directory at this point? Is there another index we should complete?


Answers:
author: Shannon S
body: Hi Quinn,

Could you first try to rebuild your index from scratch and see if that helps?

* [How to Rebuild the Content Indexes From Scratch on Confluence Server](https://confluence.atlassian.com/confkb/how-to-rebuild-the-content-indexes-from-scratch-on-confluence-server-110035351.html)

> The method for rebuilding the content index from scratch will vary depending on your version of Confluence.
>
> ### For Confluence 5.6 and Above {#toc-hId-1653214242}
>
1.
   > Shut down Confluence
2.
   > Perform a safety backup of the following two directories to a different location:
   > * `<confluence-home>/index/`
   > * `<confluence-home>/journal/`  
3.
   > Delete the two original directories:
   > * `<confluence-home>/index/`
   > * `<confluence-home>/journal/`
4.
   > *(Optional):* If your `journalentry` table is very large (10000+ entries) we recommend that you delete the contents of this table to shorten the rebuild time.  
   > [Click here for instructions...](https://confluence.atlassian.com/confkb/how-to-rebuild-the-content-indexes-from-scratch-on-confluence-server-110035351.html#)  
5.
   > Start Confluence
6.
   > Navigate to **Confluence Admin \> Content Indexing** and click "Rebuild"
7.
   > *(Optional)*: If desired, restore the following directories from your backup from Step 2:
   *
     > `<confluence-home>/index/plugin` - this is where the [Usage Tracking plugin](https://ecosystem.atlassian.net/wiki/display/USGTRK/Confluence+Usage+Tracking+Plugin;jsessionid=436EA28FDC2261B6AC414C73B07F3A8F) stores the usage statistics
   *
     > `<confluence-home>/index/edge` - this is where popularity data for regular content is stored
   *
     > `<confluence-home>/index/questions-edge` - this is where [Confluence Questions](https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence-questions) stores popularity data

If you have trouble getting your questions back with that, please let me know your Confluence version as well as CQ version and what error messages you were seeing when the indexing failed.

Shannon

comments: author: Quinn Cervantes-Prevo
body: That is what we tried and got us in a worse state of only seeing questions that had been posted within a day. We resolved most of our issue with just completing another rebuild via UI a day later.


author: Shannon S
body: Thank you for confirming, Quinn. I apologize that I missed that you had done that as well.

Can you confirm which parts of your issue are still not resolved?

Regards,

Shannon


author: Stephen Hayden
body: What was the resolution to this?


author: Shannon S
body: Stephen,

I believe the majority of their issues were resolved with a second rebuild, via the UI:

* [How to rebuild the content indices](https://confluence.atlassian.com/confkb/how-to-rebuild-the-content-indexes-from-scratch-on-confluence-server-110035351.html?_ga=2.77083346.657890034.1552324070-1686092760.1551948823)

It's not clear to me what the other issues were and if they were resolved in the end, but I would try both the UI rebuild and a rebuild in the filesystem.

Regards,

Shannon


author: Stephen Hayden
body: Indeed, just rebuilding again did it. Thanks Shannon.


author: Shannon S
body: Glad to hear, Stephen!

Take care and have a pleasant weekend.

Regards,

Shannon