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docs: answer the file server search question the site never answers - #522

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docs: answer the file server search question the site never answers#522
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@marevol marevol commented Sep 7, 2026

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Superseded by #523.

The original description was replaced: it quoted internal analytics that should not have been published.

Search Console shows a coherent cluster of Japanese queries about searching a
file server: ファイルサーバ検索 (411 impressions at average position 25.6),
ファイルサーバ全文検索 (348 at 10.9), ファイルサーバ オープンソース (174 at
15.6) and ファイルサーバ全文検索 おすすめ (93 at 13.0). Over three months that
is 1,026 impressions and not one click.

The intent behind them is selection, not instruction. Somebody is working out
whether this can search their file server at all, what it will read, and whether
it will leak documents they are not allowed to see. The site answers none of
that: use-cases is organised by industry, comparison by product, and the 23-part
guide teaches how to build something once you have already chosen it.

So this is a new page rather than a rewrite of either. It follows the shape of
supported-files, the page that already converts this kind of reader at 13.3% CTR
from position 6.0 -- narrow subject, concrete lists, no narrative.

Everything technical is taken from the source, not from memory:

- the protocol table is crawler.file.protocols (file, smb, smb1, ftp, s3, gcs)
- the SMB range is DialectVersion in the jcifs client, SMB1 through SMB 3.1.1
- permission inheritance is PermissionHelper#getSmbRoleTypeList, which takes the
  allowed and denied SID entries off the crawl metadata and resolves them to
  roles via SambaHelper#getAccountId; the (allow) and (deny) prefixes and the
  smb.role.from.file, file.role.from.file, ftp.role.from.file and
  smb.available.sid.types defaults are read from fess_config.properties

The page also states the prerequisite that decides how far a first deployment
can reach, and that a feature list tends to leave out: the document carries a
group name, so the person searching has to carry it too, which means
permission-aware search needs Active Directory or LDAP. Indexing only the
folders everyone may read does not.

Links point at /stable/ instead of a version tree so the page does not rot at
the next release; all 42 of them resolve. Each translation was parsed with
doctitle_xform=False, the setting Sphinx uses, to confirm the heading rules hold
the section structure together, that no inline markup broke against an adjacent
CJK or Hangul character, and that every title stays inside the 60 columns a
result listing shows -- they come out between 39 and 54 including the suffix.
@marevol

marevol commented Sep 7, 2026

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Closing and reopening from a clean branch; the description and commit message needed rewriting.

@marevol marevol closed this Sep 7, 2026
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marevol deleted the docs/file-server-search branch September 7, 2026 14:09
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