Spotlight: How to Index an AFP Share Point

In step 4, where you're setting permissions for the .Spotlight-V100 folder, you actually only need to make sure that root is the owner and that the permissions are at least 700; the instructions I posted above leave the .Spotlight-V100 folder read-only for all users (which won't harm anything, though).

So far, no, I have found no way to have Spotlight search a static automount, even if it is first indexed with the procedure outlined above.

I think the problem lies with the static mount method. In Tiger, all static mounts appear to be accessed by Guest on the server, which is expected; however typing "mount" at the Terminal on a client shows that the static mounts are mounted by the currently-logged in user. (This looks like masked AFP permissions as if you would simply connect to a server volume. That is, the currently-logged in user, either local or in a directory domain, is the owner of the mount point for any connected-to share point.) The exception is that /Network/Library appears to be mounted as securityagent (UID 92); so I think there's some strange masking going on with shared Libraries, new to Tiger.

Spotlight will search dynamic automounts, such as those that contain a network-based home.

--Gerrit

The metadata server process (mds) running on your server will keep the Spotlight index of the share point up-to-date when new files are added. This requires that your server be running Mac OS X Server 10.4 (version 10.4.2 recommended).

When correctly configured, you can search share points via the Spotlight menu or via the Finder's find field.

--Gerrit

Patrick:

I'd check the following:

1. List the share point's contents with "ls -a": do you have the .Spotlight-V100 folder therein? Is root the owner of the folder and can root read and write?

2. With Mac OS X Server 10.4, indexing is disabled for any mount points in /Volumes/* by default, so mdutil -s /Volumes/* should return an "Indexing Disabled" message. Even so, you should have a "mds" process running as root on the server.

3. Have you tried a search of the share point in question? (The mdutil might be returning a disabled message incorrectly.)

4. Log out all users on the client and only log in as one user at a time. I've had trouble with some Spotlight searches when more than one user is logged in simultaneously via Fast User Switching.

5. Sometimes the client-side mds process stops responding with Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.4.1. Fortunately, the Mac OS X 10.4.2 update has increased the reliability of same in my experience.

6. Make sure you're using Mac OS X Server 10.4.2 as well. Version 10.3 and earlier doesn't have a server-side mds process to update the index.

Hope this helps. Let me know... 🙂

--Gerrit

We're missing something. I have lots of share points on different servers with Spotlight searches configured and working in this way.

Have you tried deleting the .Spotlight-V100 folder just with rm instead of mdutil -E?

--Gerrit

The share points I'm using are folders housed on volumes other than the server's startup volume. In each case, the volumes are HFS+ (Mac OS Extended, Journaled) with Access Controls enabled.

--Gerrit