Spotlight and multiple boot partitions

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Spotlight and multiple boot partitions

I have two boot partitions -- "Leopard" for a 10.5 boot, and "SnowLeopard" for a 10.6 boot. They both boot fine, and the boot drive shows up as the "root" (/) drive as expected, with the non-boot drive also available (under /Volumes).

I noticed that Spotlight was picking up "duplicates" for various app searches. Oops -- that makes sense -- Spotlight was seeing both drives. I figured I'd fix the problem by setting "SnowLeopard" as inaccessible through the Privacy pane on the Spotlight control panel for the 10.5 boot, and "Leopard" as inaccessible on the 10.6 boot.

Here's where things get weird, IMHO. If I add "SnowLeopard" under "Privacy" on the 10.5 side, a re-boot to 10.6 will show "SnowLeopard" on that side as well (which isn't what I want), and setting on the 10.6 side will likewise affect the 10.5 side after a reboot.

What the $%(#& is going on, and can it be fixed without me disabling Spotlight on one of my boots? I guess OS X is saving its Spotlight "Privacy" settings in some location other than "local" to the boot volume?

Thanks,

Garin

mini, Mac OS X (10.6.1)

Posted on Oct 20, 2009 4:25 PM

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Answer 1

V.K.

Level 9

56,192 points

Oct 20, 2009 5:27 PM in response to garinh

garinh wrote:
I have two boot partitions -- "Leopard" for a 10.5 boot, and "SnowLeopard" for a 10.6 boot. They both boot fine, and the boot drive shows up as the "root" (/) drive as expected, with the non-boot drive also available (under /Volumes).

I noticed that Spotlight was picking up "duplicates" for various app searches. Oops -- that makes sense -- Spotlight was seeing both drives. I figured I'd fix the problem by setting "SnowLeopard" as inaccessible through the Privacy pane on the Spotlight control panel for the 10.5 boot, and "Leopard" as inaccessible on the 10.6 boot.

Here's where things get weird, IMHO. If I add "SnowLeopard" under "Privacy" on the 10.5 side, a re-boot to 10.6 will show "SnowLeopard" on that side as well (which isn't what I want), and setting on the 10.6 side will likewise affect the 10.5 side after a reboot.

this is normal and there is no way around that. spotlight exclusion data for a drive is stored on that drive in .spotlight-V100 directory at the top level of the drive. so the exclusion data is shared across different systems because it reads the same exclusion file. as i said, no way around this. if you don't need 10.5 partition while booted into 10.6 you can set it not to mount automatically when you boot in snow leopard by modifying /etc/fstab. you can do the same when booting in 10.5 that's the only thing I can think of that could somewhat address the issue.

What the $%(#& is going on, and can it be fixed without me disabling Spotlight on one of my boots? I guess OS X is saving its Spotlight "Privacy" settings in some location other than "local" to the boot volume?

Thanks,

Garin

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Answer 2

garinh Author

Level 1

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Oct 20, 2009 5:57 PM in response to V.K.

OK -- I guess what threw me is that the most recent setting for either boot seems to be the only one showing up.

Setting things up so that the undesired partition isn't mounted at all will work fine for me, though -- so I'll just do it that way, and share data between partitions using a NAS when needed.

Thanks,

Garin

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