rt-setup-fulltext-index(8)

🎀 NAME 🎀

okay bestie, so this is rt-setup-fulltext-index — it's one of the Request Tracker admin scripts (section 8 of the manual, the whole "system administration" girlies), and its literal job is helping you create indexes for full text search. that's it, that's the name. 💅

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so this script is the one that sets up all your full-text-search plumbing: it creates the tables, columns, functions, and/or views that your particular database type needs to do full-text searching. every db is different, so it figures out what yours wants. 🦋

⚠️ but wait — heads up — it will drop any existing indexes in the process. like, gone. so know what you're doing before you run it, okay? 😭

pls pls pls go read docs/full_text_indexing.pod first, because that's where the complete documentation for full-text indexing lives for your database type. she said read the docs and she meant it. 📖✨

🔑 nobody has a standard DBA login, i get it

if your database administrator user or password isn't the standard one, you can just tell the script explicitly with the --dba and --dba-password parameters, like:

rt-setup-fulltext-index --dba sysdba --dba-password 'secret'

yes bestie, you can actually pass the password on the command line. it's giving convenient, it's also giving "maybe think about that" 💀 but that's what the flag is for.

👀 wanna peek before you commit?

if you want to test what will happen without running any DDL, just pass the --dry-run flag. it's the trial-run flag, the window-shopping flag, the "let me see the fit before i buy it" flag. no changes, no regrets. 🫶

🍓 oracle girlies, this part is for you

the Oracle index decides which content-types it's gonna index at creation time. so this is a now-or-never situation, lowkey.

• by default, it indexes textual message bodies and textual uploaded attachments (that means attachments with filenames).
• if you'd rather it ignore textual attachments, pass the --no-attachments flag when the index is created.

that's it, that's the whole vibe check. no cap. 🔥

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

this iconic work was brought to you by:

• Ruslan Zakirov <ruz@bestpractical.com>
• Alex Vandiver <alexmv@bestpractical.com>

absolute legends, both of them, we stan. 💜

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and that's the whole page, bestie! this beauty came out of the Request Tracker Reference collection, running on perl v5.40.1, dated 2026-06-21 — so go forth, index your full text, and slay 💖✨