If the index files are missing for some reason (development machine, production error, etc.), NPEs are thrown each time indexing is attempted.

IOException is swallowed here, and not reported:

09:48:00,069 ERROR [STDERR] java.io.FileNotFoundException: no segments* file found in org.apache.lucene.store.FSDirectory@/private/tmp/share/indexes/customer: files:
09:48:00,070 ERROR [STDERR] 	at org.apache.lucene.index.SegmentInfos$FindSegmentsFile.run(SegmentInfos.java:587)
09:48:00,070 ERROR [STDERR] 	at org.apache.lucene.index.DirectoryIndexReader.open(DirectoryIndexReader.java:63)
09:48:00,070 ERROR [STDERR] 	at org.apache.lucene.index.IndexReader.open(IndexReader.java:209)
09:48:00,070 ERROR [STDERR] 	at org.apache.lucene.index.IndexReader.open(IndexReader.java:173)
09:48:00,070 ERROR [STDERR] 	at com.echothree.control.user.index.server.indexer.BaseIndexer.getIndexReader(BaseIndexer.java:273)
[...]

Resulting in later NPEs from:

Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
	at com.echothree.control.user.index.server.indexer.PartyIndexer.updatePartyEntitiesInIndex(PartyIndexer.java:176)
	at com.echothree.control.user.index.server.indexer.PartyIndexer.updatePartyIndex(PartyIndexer.java:349)
	at com.echothree.control.user.index.server.indexer.CustomerIndexer.updateCustomerIndex(CustomerIndexer.java:34)
[...]

IOException/FileNotFoundException handling needs improved. If FileNotFoundException, try to create directory. If that succeeds, mark index as needing to be reindexed. Otherwise, disable indexing for the current index.