Neo4j server failed to start - neo4j

Question

Tried starting neo4j service and got a message like
WARNING: Detected a limit of 1024 for maximum open files, while a
minimum value of 40000 is recommended.
WARNING: Problems with the
operation of the server may occur. Please refer to the Neo4j manual
regarding lifting this limitation. Starting Neo4j Server...
WARNING:
not changing user process [17348]... waiting for server to be
ready... BAD. Neo4j Server may have failed to start, please check the
logs.
The log says :
Opened [/home/ub/graph_db/neo4j-community-1.7.M01/data/graph.db/nioneo_logical.log.1] clean empty log, version=224, lastTxId=654769
2013-03-14 11:26:28.111+0000: TM opening log: /home/ub/graph_db/neo4j-community-1.7.M01/data/graph.db/tm_tx_log.1
2013-03-14 11:26:28.159+0000: Failed to load index provider lucene Target file[lucene.log.v318] already exists
org.neo4j.graphdb.NotFoundException: Target file[lucene.log.v318] already exists
at org.neo4j.kernel.impl.util.FileUtils.renameFile(FileUtils.java:165)
at org.neo4j.kernel.DefaultFileSystemAbstraction.renameFile(DefaultFileSystemAbstraction.java:78)
at org.neo4j.kernel.impl.transaction.xaframework.XaLogicalLog.renameLogFileToRightVersion(XaLogicalLog.java:700)
at org.neo4j.kernel.impl.transaction.xaframework.XaLogicalLog.renameIfExists(XaLogicalLog.java:219)
at org.neo4j.kernel.impl.transaction.xaframework.XaLogicalLog.open(XaLogicalLog.java:171)
at org.neo4j.kernel.impl.transaction.xaframework.XaContainer.openLogicalLog(XaContainer.java:64)
at org.neo4j.index.impl.lucene.LuceneDataSource.<init>(LuceneDataSource.java:229)
at org.neo4j.index.lucene.LuceneIndexProvider.load(LuceneIndexProvider.java:71)
at org.neo4j.kernel.AbstractGraphDatabase$DefaultKernelExtensionLoader.loadIndexImplementations(AbstractGraphDatabase.java:986)
at org.neo4j.kernel.AbstractGraphDatabase$DefaultKernelExtensionLoader.init(AbstractGraphDatabase.java:958)
at org.neo4j.kernel.LifeSupport$LifecycleInstance.init(LifeSupport.java:362)
at org.neo4j.kernel.LifeSupport.init(LifeSupport.java:76)
at org.neo4j.kernel.LifeSupport.start(LifeSupport.java:110)
at org.neo4j.kernel.AbstractGraphDatabase.run(AbstractGraphDatabase.java:178)
at org.neo4j.kernel.EmbeddedGraphDatabase.<init>(EmbeddedGraphDatabase.java:69)
at org.neo4j.server.NeoServerBootstrapper$1.createDatabase(NeoServerBootstrapper.java:65)
at org.neo4j.server.database.Database.createDatabase(Database.java:80)
at org.neo4j.server.database.Database.<init>(Database.java:63)
at org.neo4j.server.NeoServerWithEmbeddedWebServer.startDatabase(NeoServerWithEmbeddedWebServer.java:186)
at org.neo4j.server.NeoServerWithEmbeddedWebServer.start(NeoServerWithEmbeddedWebServer.java:97)
at org.neo4j.server.Bootstrapper.start(Bootstrapper.java:87)
at org.neo4j.server.Bootstrapper.main(Bootstrapper.java:52)
2013-03-14 11:26:28.160+0000: TM shutting down
2013-03-14 11:26:28.382+0000: Closed log /home/biju/graph_db/neo4j-community-1.7.M01/data/graph.db/nioneo_logical.log
2013-03-14 11:26:28.945+0000: NeoStore closed
2013-03-14 11:26:28.946+0000: --- SHUTDOWN diagnostics START ---
2013-03-14 11:26:28.947+0000: --- SHUTDOWN diagnostics END ---
This started happening when I have installed ElasticSearch on my machine. There was one issue with starting Elastic search "JAVA_HOME issue", which is sorted.

Answer 1

I had such a problem when I was installing Neo4j the first time on my Linux laptop, I solved putting this couple of rows at the end of the /etc/security/limits.conf file:
user hard nofile 100000
user soft nofile 40000
where user is the login name of the user who starts Neo4j.
The 10000 and 40000 are somewhat arbirtrary, they were ok for me, in case you still get the error try to increase them.

Answer 2

If you've got a db with that problem, upgrading won't make it go away. 1.8.2 will prevent this from happening though. You're running community I see so keeping old logs around isn't all that necessary. Try deleting the existing lucene.log.v318 file, or move it away at least and see what happens the next startup.