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Spotlight indexing off on USB drive insertion

I've got a weird problem: once I insert a USB flash drive into USB port, Spotlight indexing gets switched off on the main hard drive "Macintosh HD".

I really can't remember when this behavior started since I discovered it only recently (when troubleshooting entire message search in Apple Mail).

The hard drive is a new one, the system was cloned using Carbon Copy Cloner.

Also, at some point I was trying to find a way to prevent Spotlight from indexing removable drives, but can't remember actually doing anything about it, except running Spotless for a while, but that was before Snow Leopard.

And no, there is no ".metadata neverindex" file on the HD.

What could be the reason for Spotlight indexing switching off when USB drive is inserted?

MacBook5,1, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Oct 8, 2010 3:14 PM

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4 replies

Oct 10, 2010 4:43 PM in response to ScudB

When I insert a USB flash drive, the following lines appear in the system log:

Oct 10 16:35:01 Viggen fseventsd: could not open <</Volumes/USB DISK/.fseventsd/fseventsd-uuid>> (No such file or directory)
Oct 10 16:35:01 Viggen fseventsd: log dir: /Volumes/USB DISK/.fseventsd getting new uuid: 399AC126-30E5-491C-B988-6BF7D458918C
Oct 10 16:35:03 Viggen mds: (Warning) Server: No stores registered for metascope "kMDQueryScopeComputerIndexed"
Oct 10 16:35:03 Viggen com.fixamac.spotlessd: /:
Oct 10 16:35:03 Viggen com.fixamac.spotlessd: Indexing disabled.

So I guess it must be the remains of Spotless that gets indexing disabled.

Any idea of how to get rid of it?

Oct 11, 2010 9:45 AM in response to baltwo

Contacted Fixamac techsupport, received most helpful reply. The problem was that apparently Spotless was removed without disabling background processing.

Here is Techsupport message:

============
...To disable it and remove the associated files, please follow these directions:

1) Open the Terminal application (/Application/Utilities)
2) Enter the following command followed by return:

sudo launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.fixamac.spotlessd.plist

3) Enter your admin password when prompted. You will not see anything appear in the Terminal as you type. This is normal.
4) Enter the following command followed by return:

sudo rm /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.fixamac.spotlessd.plist

5) Finally, enter the following command followed by return:

sudo rm /Library/Application\ Support/Fixamac\ Software/Spotless/spotless_background.sh


Once you have completed the above, restart your computer. Spotless will no longer be installed.
============

Done that. So far so good.

Spotlight indexing off on USB drive insertion

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