Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

10.5.7 Update Broke Spotlight!

Hi Everyone,

Unfortunately I am completely unable to search, anywhere, after an update to 10.5.7 yesterday. Finder searches attempts do nothing, and I've lost the ability to search entire messages in Apple Mail.

I've run Disk Utility to repair permissions, have rebooted, and the issue continues.

MacBookPro5,1, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on May 15, 2009 6:28 AM

Reply
25 replies

May 24, 2009 11:06 AM in response to Saeven

Try to use the following Terminal commands (work on 10.5.6)
I'm not sure about 10.5.7 because I'm back to 5.6 because I'm in a heavy mixing working session and i got some issue... (but i never get spotlight issue and i cannot do any test at this time)

To temporary disable Spotlight, type the following line commands on the terminal and press Return:

% sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

To disable it permanently, type this instead:

% sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

To enable Spotlight (after temporary disabling) type the following and press Return:

% sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

To re-enable it permanently, type this instead:

% sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

G

Jun 4, 2009 5:29 AM in response to GanjoManjo

I just spent so long fixing this

It had to do with my bootcamp partition and macfuse / ntfs 3g that I forgot I had installed

I knew this because /Volumes/ had MANY Untitled Volumes...like /Volumes/Untitled 2-50

These were created at every restart by my system trying to mount the ntfs filesystem, and I could not unmount or erase it.

I did so many crazy things to try and stop it from mounting. I removed my old macfuse. In terminal type "locate FUSE" and look for an uninstall script, and run it.

All I did was re-install the latest ntfs 3g , includes latest macFUSE.

I rebooted, my bootcamp partition mounted on the desktop, and spotlight began indexing.

After it finished, I had to make a smart folder in Mail.app that searched "entire contents" before the entire contents of the main search worked ( i could search entire contents of emails in spotlight, but not before )

hope that helps someone, it took me about 5 hours.

Jul 6, 2009 3:30 PM in response to Community User

I'm having the same problem in that Spotlight won't start for me. When I try to run,

sudo mdutil -i on /

I get:
Error: unable to perform operation. (-1)
No index.

I running 10.5.7 Server on a MacPro.

I tried the launchctl command to try to temporarily disable Spotlight and I get the following message:

launchctl: Error unloading: com.apple.metadata.mds

Any ideas? Do I have to run the 10.5.7 Combo update to get Spotlight running again? Is there a bad plist that can be replaced or edited to fix this?

Thanks

Jul 6, 2009 8:39 PM in response to baltwo

I tried removing that directory previously. I also downloaded Onyx. When I go to the Parameters/Spotlight section and try to Enable indexing the Startup-disk it doesn't start and reverts back to being disabled. And I don't see any errors is System or Console logs.

In Onyx, if I try to disable "Enable the search in Dictionary" or disable "Enable the Calculator" I get these errors in the system.log file

Jul 6 13:13:53 studio defaults[2515]: \nThe domain/default pair of (com.apple.spotlight, DictionaryLookupEnabled) does not exist
Jul 6 13:13:53 studio defaults[2516]: \nThe domain/default pair of (com.apple.spotlight, CalculationEnabled) does not exist
Jul 6 13:14:12 studio com.apple.launchd[343] (com.apple.Spotlight[533]): Exited: Terminated
Jul 6 13:14:12 studio com.apple.launchd[343] (com.apple.Spotlight[2569]): posix_spawnp("/System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app/Contents/MacOS/Spotlig ht", ...): No such file or directory
Jul 6 13:14:12 studio com.apple.launchd[343] (com.apple.Spotlight[2569]): Exited with exit code: 1
Jul 6 13:14:12 studio com.apple.launchd[343] (com.apple.Spotlight): Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
Jul 6 13:14:44 studio com.apple.launchd[343] (com.apple.Spotlight): Throttling respawn: Will start in 3 seconds
Jul 6 13:36:06 studio com.apple.launchd[343] (com.apple.Spotlight): Throttling respawn: Will start in 3 seconds

On the fourth line, is spotlight missing something in it's app directory?
Looks like a combo update needed.

Jul 6, 2009 11:28 PM in response to Macfreqk

Did you try the Terminal command again? I don't use Onyx, but run this in the Terminal:

*open /System/Library/CoreServices/Spotlight.app/Contents/MacOS/*

If Spotlight, an executable isn't there, download Pacifist and use it to extract Spotlight from the install DVD. Replace the borked Spotlight.app with the extracted one, restart, and try reindexing.

10.5.7 Update Broke Spotlight!

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.