Magento – “Cannot initialize the indexer process.” error while Reindexing Product Flat Data Index

Svetoslav,

In the future please post the specs about your hosting OS, version of Magento, etc. I am going to just post some typical solutions to your problem.

Run Indexing from the CLI

1. from the CLI at the root of your magento installation

   php shell/indexer.php --reindex catalog_product_price
   

No folders in var/

1. Make sure that the var/ folder has the correct file permissions and ownership. Magento needs to write to those folders.

   Magento Permissions & Privileges

2. I recently ran across an install of magento that located the var folder in the root tmp folder of the server, you may want to check there. It was located in /tmp/magento/var/ If your var folder is located there, it is because you have a permissions issue.

Change your memory limit

I agree with sean! Change this in your .htaccess that is located in your site root

ini_set('memory_limit','2048M');

To resolve the "Cannot initialize the indexer process" you need to run follow below step

Solution 1 :-

This is usually occurred when we Enable "Use Flat Catalog Category" and "Use Flat Catalog Product"

Please connect SSH via Putty run below command:-

These is Individual commands for re-indexing:-

php shell/indexer.php --reindex catalog_category_flat

php shell/indexer.php --reindex catalog_category_product

php shell/indexer.php --reindex catalogsearch_fulltext

OR run all re-indexing:-

php shell/indexer.php --reindexall

Then clear the magento all cache.

Solution 2 :-

Try to run indexing with PHP script file. Create a file reindex_custom.php in the root.

<?php
require_once("app/Mage.php");
Mage::app('default');
Mage::app()->setCurrentStore(Mage_Core_Model_App::ADMIN_STORE_ID);
try{
$indexerByShell = Mage::getBaseDir().'/shell/indexer.php';
if(file_exists($indexerByShell))  
 { 
$indexListByCode = array(
"catalog_product_attribute",
                       "catalog_product_price",
                       "catalog_product_flat",
                       "catalog_category_flat",
                       "catalog_category_product",
                       "catalog_url",
                       "catalogsearch_fulltext",
                       "cataloginventory_stock"
    );
        //reindex using magento command line  
        foreach($indexListByCode as $indexer)  
        {  
            echo "reindex $indexer \n ";  
            exec("php $indexerByShell --reindex $indexer");  
        } 
    }
}catch(Exception $e){
    echo $e;
}
?>

Then clear the magento all cache and run this file as http://domain.com/reindex_custom.php