Unable to search network drives with Lion...

Thank you for the insight on macports. I will google it again. I did that some time ago with limited success.

I fully agree with your assessment. I am in the very same situation. I will change jobs next week and they already told me they will most likely not support my Mac... with these issues I am not really willing to embarrass myself anyways.

I am not really sure where the problem lies... Apple keeps claiming its Exchange Server or whatever... Maybe there is a legal or stubborn reason against MS behind it... It still suprises me that they are blocking this essential search feature. I simply cannot image it is out of negligence.

Hello again,

On a German-spoken forum I found out that searching with 10.6.x (SL) on mounted network drives was basically a bug that was fixed in 10.7. (Lion). In other words, The search & indexing function have officially NOT been supported anymore since 10.5 and when it worked it was due to "wrong" settings on the server side or an SMB-bug on either side (client or server).

Basically this was "fixed" in 10.7..... WOW.. This is actually confirmed when looking on the FAQ page of DAVE, a commercial SMB provider who works closely with Apple. See question #16 on DAVE's "troubleshooting" page.

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"Good morning Dave"... HAL2000. "Something wonderful is happening".

So this is a feature not a bug... There's a well known competitor who used this line quite often too...

I have to take DAVE's word for it, and they seem reliable enough for me to do so, I have however been reading anecdotal evidence in this thread and elsewhere that searching smb shares was possibly in snow leopard.

If the case is that they have intentionally disabled it why are they then using subterfuges in their replies to customers on this issue?

Previously in the thread I read that the rationale for disabling it was not to flood the network upon spotlight indexing. Which is a rather rubbish excuse, all the more so f the network you want to flood is your own private network...Then a few posters, if I remember correctly chimed in and said we could search in sl, and then issue became apple's implementation (since gpl 3 disallowed thme to use the open source samba on) of smb 2.0 which is a 1.0 implementation that no one seems to be doing any work on it to improve.

Besides the search issue, acccessing of an smb share is much slower, and more unreliable (case in point with smb printers not working). An I pad app I have (a $4.99 one or so) for accessing smb networks loads up all the shares much much faster, as well as accesses the folders then after than OS X's. What an embarrassment...

In any case, could anyone please contact apple via email and request an official response from them. I will too as soon as soon as I get the time. They need t finally respond openly and honestly about this. Whatever their response is I think it should be our priority to blog anywhere we can the response verbatim, and make it known that the world's most advanced os cannot search the most common industry standard network interface.

I don't think they have any justification technical or otherwise for crippling this much needed feature. And since apparently they don't have any immediate plans to offer network searching, the it and user community should be made well aware that when they buy a Mac they are buying a computer that in every office or otherwise smb network they have to connect and share it will not be able to search for files or their contents. Whenever their employers tells them look for this file on that folder network the dime a dozen net books with xp will search it and they will have to copy said network folder locally to be able to do so.

Just posting a few user comments from sections of the thread so new users having this problem are kept abreast, they also answer some of the questions made previously by other users (paragraph denotes other user posting):

This problem has nothing to do with third party tools. I never used third party tools for search before Lion forced me too... Just so I could search for files on SMB network shares. It's a repeated problem that many people have experienced. My understanding is that Apple changed from using SAMBA to their own proporietary SMB implementation and that is why we are experiencing all these issues under Lion. It's not just causing us issue but a lot of vendors. I know Sonos has had issues with the SMB file shares, etc .... Apple needs to relase a fix already

How hard would it be to reverse whatever they have done so that we could get this back - I mean the search experience with 10.6 was great, in Lion its just been torpedoed, sabotaged and bombed and now it's non existent!!!

Two answer for your questions:

- In snow leopard i had indexing disabled on network volumes (no ".Spotlight-V100" was created) but the spotlight search works more slowly than indexed files on main hard disk but works.

- In lion, i have write rights on my shared folder but i can't search any file stored in subfolders. Searching in FIRST LEVEL FOLDER works, as i said.Doesn't matter if indexing is enabled or disabled on network volumes.

Summary of facts, as per this thread and experienced users.

10.6 - no issue searching FTP or any remote/local server SMB or otherwise.

10.7 - flawed on all counts as related to 10.6 note above

- 10.6 again, this summary is evidenced by experienced users on this forum making similar claims. I can say with complete honesty that 10.6 searches both FTP and SMB servers without issue. It shows the small cog wheel in the lower right corner of Finder windows when doing so and is relatively fast. It requires no 3rd party software to achieve this expected behavior.

-10.7 does nothing at all, unless (I think, more testing needed here but **** Apple, I will not beta test released software). If one discolses all folders it may search eventually, where this is cached if cached is unknown to me.

-10.7 ***** in this respect.

Apple, we need this feature for our professional work.

After some tests in 10.7.3 (all up to date), ran this mac on 10.7.3 for about 4 days or so before I partitioned and installed 10.6.8 to overcome this issue.

OK, what I found interesting is all 10.7.3 macs with the exception of one was able to search FTP and SMB servers without issue.

Here is what I see going on.

In Lion, you must do the following if you want to search going forward:

1) start at the root level of the root directory of whichever machine you want to search on

2) go to list view

Now repeat the following:

1) command-a

2) command-right click

do this repeatedly until all the directories are discolsing their contents

Now try to search, it should find what you are looking for.

I will use fsventer (3rd party app) to see if I can locate where Lion is caching the contents of the directory

What I find amusing is that Lion does not do this at the time the user searches. It obviously works but only after Lion has disclosed the contents of all directories beforehand — I am confident that this is a bug because it works but not in favor of the user.

Two things I noticed about this method of 'forcing a cache' of the server's contents, as I call it.

1) It searches very very quickly compared to 10.6, it really is fast!

2) There is no spinnnig cogwheel in the bottom right corner indicating a search in progress (annoying, unless it finds so quickly that there is no timeout that suggests it draw the spinning cogwheel) — no feedback on a process can be frustrating for the user.

I am now preparing another test to see if I can figure out where the OS is putting files, such as a cache or something. It would be interesting to see where the OS is puttng this stuff.

My test bed looks like this. All apps closed, except Finder, Safari and fseventer (free app - very nice)

––Here is what I saw go on with fseventer while I disclosed folders for a mounted FTP server.

-I found nothing idicative of a cache going on, in conclusion I don't know where this is store. It maybe an invisble file somwhere.

-I only say /private/var/folders and /private/var/db/bootcaches get touched.

Not sure what to make of this, 10.7.3 (at time of writing) has at least his flaw. The workaround appears to be disclosing all folders at least once before you start your search, then it does work.

regards

LostAccount wrote:

In Lion, you must do the following if you want to search going forward:

1) start at the root level of the root directory of whichever machine you want to search on

2) go to list view

Now repeat the following:

1) command-a

2) command-right click

do this repeatedly until all the directories are discolsing their contents

cmd-right click didn't do anything on my machine (10.7.3), but option-left click did. It opened all subdirs at once in list view.

And boy did that hammer both my iMac and my file server!

After 5 minutes and a peak memory usage of 5 Gig, finder was done scanning the 200.000 files and mds/mdworker took over for another 5 minutes at 300% CPU load. So something related to Spotlight was going on. The bad news is: whatever search term I tried, no results were displayed...EDIT: after some experimenting with the mdfind command line tool, there were some results, although very few. For instance, 32 out of my 2567 .avi files were found. Strange.

Also everytime I option-left click on a top level folder, all the hammering starts again. It seems that mds can't save it's search results permanently.

BTW, be sure to globally disable icon preview in finder (cmd-J) before doing this.

yeah... tried the same a couple of days ago ;-) Not very user friendly.

Since DAVE, i.e. Thursby Software, does not support this indexing feature and Thursby Software is heavily involved in writing the SMB tools for Apple... this looks like a lost cause to me. Apparently, they do not want us to search external network drives. Which would make sense if this would slow down the usable network bandwidth considerably on a multi-user network where the files change all the time like I have it with some network volumes at my workplace.

I would appreciate, however, if OS X would give the user at least the option to search and index network volumes, instead of just disabling it by default. This is very annoying. Mabe we should contact the DAVE support, they could take us further than Apple, potentially.

Again, did anybody here check with the developer version of Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) ? Any changes there?

Gosh, I am sorry. I was thinking in 10.6 terms.

In Lion you need only click the right arrow key.

Yes, activity monitor does report quite a but of activity with Finder right down to reporting that it's not responding. It will respond evntually I am sure, it's just too busy to respond at the time it is disclosing all the folders.

PS, this will take a load on your server, FTP or otherwise, it has list all those files.

Oh I wish this would just get fixed 😟

Hi

The point here is that we absolutely need search. I think users don't believe it's a good thing to remove search for the sake of increasing bandwidth. Search is crtitical, bandwidth is a result of necessary activity on the network, if it's required so be it.

I bet an applescript or an automator droplet is what we need here. Something that just mounts all the FTP/SMB servers at the start of the day and begins the process of scanning these directories so that our lives run smoothly.

Regards😢

LostAccount wrote:

The point here is that we absolutely need search.

I couldn't agree more. It is absolutely essential for my work. I've been using EasyFind and tried out Foxtrot. Finally I copied files to be searched on a 2TB Firewire drive...

Hmm…you say you copied files to be searched.

Maybe it would be a good idea to use some tool to mirror your source and destination (sync), I know transmit does this.

What a workaround you have. I may do the same thing, luckily for me they are mostly certificates. Eventually I will need to search. Someone in this thread recommended the free EasyFind, I downloaded it incase.

macobs30 wrote:

yeah... tried the same a couple of days ago ;-) Not very user friendly.

Since DAVE, i.e. Thursby Software, does not support this indexing feature and Thursby Software is heavily involved in writing the SMB tools for Apple... this looks like a lost cause to me. Apparently, they do not want us to search external network drives. Which would make sense if this would slow down the usable network bandwidth considerably on a multi-user network where the files change all the time like I have it with some network volumes at my workplace.

I would appreciate, however, if OS X would give the user at least the option to search and index network volumes, instead of just disabling it by default. This is very annoying. Mabe we should contact the DAVE support, they could take us further than Apple, potentially.

I think you are being too lenient and too polite. I don't give a flying banana about DAVE, or JOE, or SMITH, their vested interests, their work with apple, and I don't care to play detective and lose time I am not going to get back on this earth so the richest tech company in the world can offer basic os search funtionality. They are inexcusable since this is not an insurmantable technical problem and the rest is a load of horse manure. They are paying the guy from dixons to run their stores a prospective $60 million with a weeks work, and they can't buy up DAVE, BOBBY or TERRY and get them to work for them to offer their users some basic os and networking functionality.

There are tons of technical ways to enable this so it does not flood the network.

They can set it to index once, and then allow the user to specify low network usage times during the day where spotlight should work so it doesn't tax the network.

An alternative would be to cap spotlight indexing to a certain acceptable quota for network activity and have it work in this mode.

Also some network shares work as libraries that are not updated very often, or not at all. Why would then apple disallow os x to search within a drive that isn't updated or is very seldom updated, since searching there wouldn't impact network perfomance once the spotlight index is created?

Why would apple not allow searh on my own network where I could very well be the judge if I am overwhelming it or not?

There could be an option to index specific user selected folders on the network drive where the indexing tax will be minimal. If I use a network drive at work for a few pdfs, a few words, excels, and work filetypes, I should be able to set it to be searchable and by virtue of the volume of data I will be using I won't be taxing the network. The alternative to keep a synced version of said network folder on my computer so it can be searched via a third party (again...) app such as chronosync is not acceptable.

Third party apps such as easyfind also tax the network, and they don't even work half well, and they also have to search within each file without having some index ready? Don't these tax the network even more on each search when they have to go through every file possibly without making an index for future searches.

Competitors computers that searh the network without an index tax it even more as well, since every in file search is essentially re-indexing.

(At the end of the day if I am costing high traffic to the network the admin will tell me so, apple isn't my nanny to forbid me to begin with)

To sum up: No possibility to search a network storage by default is inexcusable. To suggest that there is no need to search a network drive and to turn a blind eye on this basic user requirements is the worse of what apple could be doing, but that's effectively what they are saying, you won't search your network drives period.

There are technical workarounds to avoid flooding a network with spotlight, like setting specific times spotlight should work or capping spotlight's activities. Alternative methods of in file search can flood the network even worse, since they don't index anything after they are done. Some "library" type network storages are seldom updated and the bulk of the first indexing does the job just fine with negligible tax to the network on subsequent indexing; there should be an option for drives that are seldom updated to be searchable. Enabling searching in specified user created folders on the network will also not tax the network as a whole - the alternative of syncing your network folders on your mac to be able to search them is unacceptable. In all private user networks said user should be the arbitrator of whether the search function should be enabled and how much bandwidth this is going to cost.

Apple get your heads out of the sand and fix this. (and while you are at it fix the forums too, when someone replies to a thread to not be taken to an arbitrary page of that thread but to the page they replied too).

p.s. Any alternative here is unacceptable, mirroring whole network stores to our macs isn't an option as we can't keep dragging 2 and 3tb drives along, and the mirroring of all the files will also put even more bandwidth cost to the network as well as opening the door up to tons of corruption and sync issues. There's a reason why network stores exist to not have to mirror files locally. Easyfind or similar applications are freeware rubish (no offence to devs meant, but there's a reason they are free) that can take a tremendous amount of time to work because they don't index anything.

The way Apple solved the problem of avoiding network and server load is to store the index on the share itself. That way no network resources are needed at index creation, and queries are very light on resources. Obviously, you either need a Mac on the serving side to create the index, or push the index from a client Mac to a non-Apple server. The latter was possible before Lion, but created lots of problems with permissions on the server side and file naming conventions etc. the usual stuff to deal with when you want to support a competitors infrastructure. Anyways, Spotlight search on a share that is hosted from a Mac has been reported to work by a number of users in this thread. Hence as long as you stay in the Apple walled garden, everything works.

I find it completely ridiculous to complain about Apple not fully supporting SMB, which is a Microsoft product. Does Microsoft support AFP, the Apple file protocol? No. Does any of you guys complain to Microsoft about that? Certainly not because that would be equally ridculous.

Apple and Microsoft are competitors. Both want to lock you into their world. In fact they make more money by not being compatible. Flooding this thread with useless complaints about the biggest company in the world not supporting a competitor's product is just plain stupid. Either buy a Mac server or replace your Mac client with a Windows machine, or live with a 3rd party product.

Does Apple advertise Macs as being compatible to Windows servers or your NAS at home? You can't blame Apple if your Mac isn't 100% compatible with your non-Apple environment. Would any of you guys complain to Chevrolet for not supporting BMW engines in their cars? Yet that's what you expect from Apple.

So get a Mac file server, put your files on there and be a happy camper. If that's not an option for you, then you have to live in your Windows world at work or whatever NAS you're using at home. I will replace my home-grown Linux file server with a Mac Mini soon. Maybe you should too.

Message was edited by: Mojo66

Mojo66: if you actually read this forumn you would know its NOT limited to SMB and its a GENERAL issue with LION which effects ALL network storage INCLUDING apples own products.

LION is broken! Has been from the beggining! Apple has made absolutely no movs to acknowlegde, log, work on, fix, or even respond to customers on this issue instead choosing the osterich approach of sticking there heads in the sand and hoping everyone will just go away !

I am all with Applesuper and the various other people who have posted on this forumn that this bug is totally unacceptable. Apples response is totally unacceptable. The lack of a fix is totally uncceptable. And its 1 thing which WILL make me not buy apple. Why would I want an OS that cant search my NAS even when my NAS is formatted with apple supported Filestem ? Thats a serious question ? I am not talking Microsoft, or SMB, AFP as supported by 3rd party NAS devices DO NOT WORK with lion with respect to search! and did pre-lion.

Its not an indexing issue, its not a licensing issue, its nothing but a bug, ignored.