Unable to search network drives with Lion...

I strongly encourage people who still have issues with unexpected behavior related to this thread to contact AppleCare and report the issue. Provide as much information as possible and tell them that you expect an answer on why your mac doesn't behave as expected on a network.

I don't know what else to offer. Remember, Mountain Lion has 90 days phone support from its date of purchase.

Regards

I've reported the issue and received the same response as everyone else. However, I've learned that my mac does behave as expected on a network. As Apple expects it to behave, not me.

Thanks for your suggestion but I don't think Apple will provide a fix to this due to its Techno-hubris.

Following some advices I found on this post, I previously added some volumes in the spotlight privacy tab...so this is why terminal gave me the "Indexing and searching disabled." result.

Now I've removed those volumes from the privacy tab and repeated the "mdutil /Volumes/_yourshare_ -i on" command and now the result is "Indexing enabled".

In fact now the indexing seems to be working as i'm now able to search files....even if it is not flawless as before...

hc-amis thank you very very much!

This AD is still a solution. I have a large 4TB server. A lot of people working on it. I need to search on the fly. Leopard always search good. Lion unfortunately not. APPLE please. Why do you make NEW OS AND WASTE GOOD OLD TOOLS!

Just wanted to post MY results from a couple of the solutions offered inluding EasyFind.

1 - I tried the the re-indexing terminal command and it DID start indexing after about 30-60 secs

2 - I downloaded EasyFind to compare

So, I had a shared folder named "chap" inside one of the main folders on the share

BOTH were able to find files, no problem.

However, neither was able to find the "chap" folder. Htye could only find it when I actually opened the main folder and then ran the search from the main folder.

EasyFind had the same issue as Spotlight in this case, I'm not sure why they don't search for sub-folders.

Anyway, still hoping for a solution.

running 10.7.5

searching a NAS drive share

will try to post back after searching from our other Mac running 10.6.8

I had the exact same problem. Using finder/folder search on a mounted drive was not doing anything. Immediately went to "0 items". Based on some suggestions here, I tried using the following terminal command and was getting same error as others:

sudo mdutil /Volumes/MY_VOLUME -i on
Error: unable to perform operation.  (-400)
Error: unknown indexing state.

I then tried adding my drive to Spotlight > Privacy list, as suggested here, but was alerted with an error saying I couldn't add the drive. This made me suspect that something was corrupt. Maybe spotlight prefs. So I deleted the prefs. This had no effect. Then I googled reseting Spotlight and came accross a solution to reset your Spotlight cache. I opened up terminal and typed: (This will cause your Spotlight to re-index everything! So it might take a while.)

sudo mdutil -E /

This solution worked and I'm now able to search all my network drives. Hope this helps others

Thanks, this was such are large thread and I started from the OP and started skimming until the end.

djones9000 thanks for posting a "fix", my spotlight is working on my smb shared drives now. Hope It remains working so as to not have to "sudo mdutil -E /" often.

It is partially working for me, where before searches yielded nothing. I now can find FOLDER names on the SMB drive. However, it will not find anything by FILE names. This seems a bizarre result and I'd appreciate any useful thoughts on this.

Thanks.

Rick

I can see the mounted shared volume but when execute in terminal from client that command

sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/Name_of_shared_volume

I receive that error:

Error: unable to perform operation. (-403)

Server search enabled.

Why ? How to solve ?

It's not broken.

It *is* broken, like many other things.

I do not need to index all the network drives, but I need to search them. Like it was working in Snow Leopard - without indexing. And now it is broken.

I can't believe how long this thread has become.

I recommend people who are having trouble, just use the free app, easyfind. When I had issues with search, which I don't use much of I used it daily and it works!

Maybe the whole thing is broken, I can share an urelated issue. Mail search is completely messed up. I have to use spotlight from the upper right corner to get results - very frustrating. I won't get into it here.

I have my networked drives indexed in Spotlight, and searches seem to be functioning as expected, but I am disappointed with one detail.

I have a huge collection of tagged images on the network drive, and Spotlight doesn't seem to "see" those tags, even though it can locate the image files if I type a filename (full or partial). The same files, when copied to my hard drive, are locatable using the image tags embedded in the files.

Any suggestions?

Profbib wrote:

I have my networked drives indexed in Spotlight, and searches seem to be functioning as expected...

It should be "expected" otherwise.

Now, imagine netowork drive in the office where 50 people are working on it, continuously changing and creating/deleting files.

In this situation, how anyone could imagine indexing working properly?

And, my main question is - what they were thinking, if anything at all?

In addition to network drives, I'm finding the same issue with external drives as well. I'm highly dissappointed with Apple on this. After much research and searching through dozens of forums, someone mentioned the EasyFind app. This is the best option for now. I'm a fan of Apple but this inconvenience and the hours I spent for a solution almost made me want to go back to Microsoft Windows. I have a 4TB external drive and without a functional search, it's a nightmare to find anything.

Agreed, be aware that despite what people say about easyfind, its not consistent either. I have had it consistently miss certain files many times. For exampe if I have a series of number video files, I will find that easy find cant find file 4 for example, despite it being there and matching the pattern of all the other files.

I have given up on searching external or network drives with apple. Its fruitless, pointless and the most profounding limiting thing they could do their product.