Spotlight and Find not working

Question

Spotlight and Find not working

Hi everyone

Apologies if I'm covering old ground here.

I don't use either Spotlight or Find very often, but discovered recently that neither now works. From other posts, I think this may have started when I installed the 4.11 software update. There are no new software updates available (ie I have already got the most recent Security Update, which seems to have helped in some other similar cases).

Spotlight just doesn't find anything. Finder's cog-symbol-thing spins for as long as I let it, with no result.

I have tried trashing the spotlight.plist file, and quitting the SystemUIServer process from within Activity Monitor. I have also rebuilt the disc using Disk Warrior. None of this helped.

I tried dragging the hard disc to the Privacy pane of Spotlight to force it to re-index, but nothing can be dragged to the Privacy pane.

All suggestions gratefully received.

Thanks, Peter

Power Mac G4, Mac OS X (10.4.11), 933MHz

Posted on Jan 26, 2008 6:25 AM

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Answer 1

Henry G4

Level 4

1,871 points

Jan 26, 2008 9:04 AM in response to Peter Holliday

Hi.

First of all, try this: move this file to the Desktop

/User/Library/Preferences/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist

and restart.

If that doesn't work, then open Terminal and verify that indexing is enabled, by typing at the prompt:

sudo mdutil -s /

It should report "Indexing enabled".

If you want to rebuild the Soptlight index, then type:

sudo mdutil -E /

Good Luck.

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Answer 2

Jan 27, 2008 9:16 AM in response to Henry G4

Thanks for getting back to me.

Unfortunately none of this worked. sudo mdutil -s / in Terminal returned

Error: Could not get indexing status for volume.

Everything else is still as originally described. Ah well...

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Answer 3

Henry G4

Level 4

1,871 points

Jan 27, 2008 2:39 PM in response to Peter Holliday

Have you repaired permissions and verified/repaired the startup drive? If you haven't, then you should try it.

In case that doesn't work either, you can force enable indexing by this Terminal command:

sudo mdutil -i on /

Good Luck.

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Answer 4

Jan 28, 2008 3:35 AM in response to Henry G4

Hi again

Although I had already run Disk Utility and DiskWarrior, I tried them both again, and also booted up from the installation disk and ran permission repair from there. Although it seemed to correct quite a few permissions, the situation with Spotlight and Find is still the same.

sudo mdutil -i on / returns "Could not set indexing status for volume".

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Answer 5

Feb 3, 2008 9:23 AM in response to Peter Holliday

hi,
i have also had this problem also for ages! so annoying as having spotlight and find working again would really help me solve current problems with ez drummer not being found by logic 8.

i have exactly the same as peter holliday right up to 'could not set indexing status for volume'

if you know anyway to solve this problem that started with that apple update which was ages ago would be great!
many thanks.

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Answer 6

Feb 4, 2008 11:19 AM in response to Peter Holliday

I've had much trouble with spotlight lately too. Queries showing no results, console reporting errors, etc. I tried all the usual remedies (trashing prefs, rebuilding indices, repairing permissions). Nothing works.

Then I noticed in the Activity Monitor that the mds process was running as the login user. I force quit it, and it immediately restarted as uid root - and voila! all my spotlight queries worked!

This solution is less than satisfactory, however, as every time I log out/in or reboot, the mds process runs as the login user until I manually quit it again. Perhaps a more experienced unix person can tell me the problem and how to solve it.

On a (perhaps) related note, something futzed up my keychain database and I had to delete and recreate that tool. Do I need to add spotlight to it, somehow?

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Answer 7

Feb 6, 2008 3:24 PM in response to Peter Holliday

Same problems with "Could not reset volume index, error 0" when I use "sudo mdutil -E /"; "Could not set indexing status for volume." when I use "sudo mdutil -i on /".

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Answer 8

Feb 22, 2008 1:47 AM in response to Peter Holliday

Thanks to everyone for their comments. There seem to be quite a few other threads detailing a variety of problems with Spotlight, but as yet I haven't found anything that helps.

Brief confusing addition: I just installed the recent iTunes update 7.6.1, and afterwards ran fsck just to see if everything was ok/no worse. When I rebooted, the little Spotlight icon at the top right had a pulsing white dot in the "magnifying lens". When I clicked on it, I got a drop down menu telling me that Spotlight was busy indexing, including a time bar that was apparently estimating how long this would take. Then it stopped, and all is exactly as it was previously, ie not working.

It could have been worse, I suppose - others seem to have got stuck in "permanently indexing" mode. I wish Apple would address this problem, but I'm not holding my breath - so any further ideas would be very welcome.

Thanks, Peter

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