Recently we have been facing a daunting task of configuring search on a server which keeps giving Search service is currently offline error messages. After lots of tweaks, following action plan finally did the trick:
1. Remove all web front ends from the server farm
2. Re-Create the new SSP and use a new Web Application to host the SSP administration site. Please note that there is a need to start search service in order to host SSP on a new web application.
You can use following STSADM based commands to accomplish this:
Stsadm –o provisionservice –action stop –servicetype Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.OfficeServerService
iisreset
Stsadm –o provisionservice –action start –servicetype Microsoft.Office.Server.Administration.OfficeServerService
iisreset
3. Configure Search Settings, Start crawler
4. Reconnect the Servers disconnected in step 1
Content should automatically start getting propagated to the new WFEs configured for "Content Query" role.
c6bf4c80-860c-4d61-9aee-2ff37768de7b|0|.0