Reindex doesn't work (but shows success message)

Question

I have a local environment and an online environment. Reindexing works locally but not online.

In the backend I'm getting the message:

One or more of the Indexes are not up to date: Product Attributes, Product Prices, Catalog URL Rewrites, Category Products, Catalog Search Index, Stock Status, Tag Aggregation Data. Click here to go to Index Management and rebuild required indexes.

If I try to do this on the Index Management Page like this:

Then I get a success message but as you can see Updated at is still at an older date and Status is still REINDEX REQUIRED. (also refreshed the page but no difference)

I also tried to do this through the command line like this:

And then the following:

But no difference .. What could be the problem of this?

Answer 1

Whenever you start an indexing process, Magento writes out a lock file to the var/locks folder.

$ cd /path/to/magento
$ ls var/locks
index_process_1.lock    index_process_4.lock    index_process_7.lock
index_process_2.lock    index_process_5.lock    index_process_8.lock
index_process_3.lock    index_process_6.lock    index_process_9.lock

The lock file prevents another user from starting an indexing process. However, if the indexing request times out or fails before it can complete, the lock file will be left in a lock state. That's probably what happened to you. I'd recommend you check the last modified dates on the lock files to make sure someone else isn't running the re-indexer right now, and then remove the lock files.

I hope this will help you.