Troubleshooting (.NET) Leave feedback

Problems specific to running this server — which means Docker problems, since Docker is its only channel. For issues that are the same on every platform (the server not appearing in your client, query syntax, evaluation limits), see Troubleshooting & FAQ.

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. If you have seen dnx GroupDocs.<Product>.Mcp --yes in another GroupDocs MCP guide, that is correct for those products and does not apply here.

The response reads:

Indexing failed for 'contracts': The index folder
'/data/.groupdocs-search-index' is not writable by the server process.
In Docker on Linux the container runs as a non-root user, ...

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. Fix: --user "$(id -u):$(id -g)" on the command line, or "--user", "1000:1000" in a JSON config — Install on Linux. Or keep documents read-only and mount a writable /index volume with GROUPDOCS_MCP_INDEX_PATH=/index — Configuration.

With -v …:/data:ro the default index location inside /data cannot be written, and indexing fails with the same “is not writable” message. Add a writable index volume: -v /path/to/index:/index -e GROUPDOCS_MCP_INDEX_PATH=/index.

/data was not a mounted host folder, so the index lived inside the container and went away with --rm. Mount the documents folder: -v /path/to/documents:/data. With a separate index volume, check that /index is mounted too.

Start Docker Desktop (or dockerd).

The volume did not mount what you expected:

• The host path does not exist — Docker silently creates an empty directory instead of failing.
• File sharing is not enabled for that location (Docker Desktop → Settings → Resources → File sharing) on Windows and macOS.
• Windows path form — use forward slashes: -v C:/Docs:/data.

List the folder from inside the container:

docker run --rm --entrypoint ls \
  -v /path/to/documents:/data \
  ghcr.io/groupdocs-search/search-net-mcp:latest -la /data

Tools take contracts or contracts/lease.pdf, not /home/me/contracts. An unknown path answers with the folder’s contents, so the agent can correct itself. In the environment, GROUPDOCS_MCP_STORAGE_PATH and GROUPDOCS_MCP_INDEX_PATH are container paths.

The image is about 380 MiB and on first use your client waits while Docker pulls it. Warm it once:

docker pull ghcr.io/groupdocs-search/search-net-mcp:latest

The first indexing of a large folder also takes time; later questions read the index.

:latest resolves to the newest release whenever the container starts. For shared or committed configurations, pin the tag — ghcr.io/groupdocs-search/search-net-mcp:26.10.1.

In your AI client, ask “list your GroupDocs search tools and the license status” — the agent should name eight tools and report the licensing mode.

For a scripted check outside any client, the integration-test repository has a smoke test that performs the MCP handshake, lists the tools, indexes sample documents and runs a search:

git clone https://github.com/groupdocs-search/GroupDocs.Search.Mcp.Tests.git
cd GroupDocs.Search.Mcp.Tests/docker-scripts
./04_run-server-with-samples.sh

It tests ghcr.io/groupdocs-search/search-net-mcp:latest by default (--image picks another tag) and ends with OK when the image works.

Post your docker run arguments (redact license paths) and the client name in the Search forum. Bugs: GitHub issues.