The mkvdk utility is an indexing application, provided with other Verity utilities, that you can use to create and maintain collections. It is a command-line utility that you can use within other applications or shell scripts to provide more sophisticated scheduling and other capabilities.

The mkvdk executable file, which starts the mkvdk utility, is located in the platform/bin directory. For more information on the specific location of this directory, see Location of Verity utilities.

The mkvdk utility syntax

The following is the basic syntax of the mkvdk command:

mkvdk -collection path [option] [dockey]

Multiple options and dockeys can be included, as needed. If dockey is a list of files, it should consist of an at sign (@) followed by the filename that contains a simple list of files (for example, @filelist). For more information about the options for the mkvdk utility, see Getting started with the Verity mkvdk utility.

The following operations occur when you use the mkvdk utility to create a new collection:

1. New collection directories are created and the specified style files are copied to the style subdirectory.
2. The style file settings are read and the required information is passed to the Verity search engine.
3. The gateway is used to open the document files, which are parsed according to the settings in various style files.
4. A new partition is created, which includes an index and an attribute table.
5. Assist data is generated, which might include a spanning word list.

When problems occur during an operation, the mkvdk utility writes error messages to the system log file (sysinfo.log). You can direct error and other messages to the console by using the mkvdk command with the -outlevel option. You can direct messages to a file of your choice by using the -loglevel and -logfile options.

The log file contains the following fields:

• Date
• Time
• Level
• Code
• Component
• Description

You can use the log file to view details about what happens during the collection creation process. Use the mkvdk -loglevel command and specify the numeric identifier for the message level you want, as summarized in the following table:

To calculate the numeric parameter, add the numbers for the message types you want to include. The default for both -outlevel and -loglevel is 15, which selects fatal, error, warning, and status messages (1+2+4+8).