Install on Linux Leave feedback

Install the GroupDocs.Search MCP server on Linux with the Docker engine, and run the container as your user so it can write its index:

sudo apt-get install -y docker.io
docker pull ghcr.io/groupdocs-search/search-net-mcp:latest
docker run --rm -i --user "$(id -u):$(id -g)" \
  -v $(pwd)/documents:/data \
  ghcr.io/groupdocs-search/search-net-mcp:latest

Then register it in your AI client — Register in AI clients has the exact block per client — and restart the client.

Note

Docker is the only channel for this product. The packed tool is 280.9 MiB — the GroupDocs.Search engine is about 200 MiB with its ONNX and SkiaSharp natives — which is over nuget.org’s 250 MB package limit, so dnx and dotnet tool install are not available for this product. That also means there are no native libraries to install — everything is inside the image.

• Docker engine. Add yourself to the docker group (sudo usermod -aG docker $USER) and log out and in (or newgrp docker) before the first run.
• About 380 MiB of disk for the image.

The image runs as a non-root user (uid 1654). On Linux a mounted folder keeps its host owner, so a folder you own is read-only inside the container and the index cannot be written — indexing fails with “The index folder … is not writable by the server process”. Run the container as your user. Docker Desktop on Windows and macOS does not enforce this.

docker run --rm -i --user "$(id -u):$(id -g)" \
  -v /path/to/documents:/data \
  ghcr.io/groupdocs-search/search-net-mcp:latest

MCP client configs are JSON and run no shell, so $(id -u) is not expanded there. Put the numbers in directly — id -u and id -g print them, typically 1000:

"args": [ "run", "--rm", "-i", "--user", "1000:1000",
          "-v", "/path/to/documents:/data",
          "ghcr.io/groupdocs-search/search-net-mcp:latest" ]

The alternative is to keep documents read-only and give the index its own writable volume — Configuration.

Client config locations on Linux: Claude Desktop ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json, VS Code user-level ~/.config/Code/User/mcp.json — full list in Register in AI clients.

Ask your agent “list your GroupDocs search tools and the license status”. A scripted check: verifying an installation.

• docker: permission denied — you are not in the docker group yet; newgrp docker or re-login.
• “The index folder … is not writable” — the container is not running as you; add --user as above.
• Empty /data in the container — the host path did not exist, so Docker created an empty directory. Create the folder first.
• SELinux hosts — add :z to the volume (-v $(pwd)/documents:/data:z) if the container cannot read mounted files.

Installing on a different OS? Windows · macOS