Unable to search network drives with Lion...

I agree, all the solutions (spotlight indexing and easyfind) are workarounds and are not really satisfying.

After skipping Lion, due to many bugs and problems, I was really happy with Mountain Lion in the beginning, but this bug is really annoying in a company it enviroment.

Feels like a car without a horn... 🙂

Well said! I can't even recommend a new Mac for business. How do I tell people, It's the best computer I have ever used, it just can't search your Network or NAS. It looks like Mavericks is having issues just connecting, let alone searching.

So anyone have tested Mavericks? Do you know if searching working there?

It seems to work but only partially. I can find files and folders in the root directory of my NAS drive. But it will not search within subfolders. Have no idea why. It's absurd that Mavericks has not resolved this issue. Inexcusable, really.

Has anyone tried SMBUp?

I was really hoping Mavericks would fix this with its theoretical SMB2 implementation, but it didn't...

I saw people were trying to use it to re-enable SMB file sharing, but wasn't sure if it would fix the search problem. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3208098?start=0&tstart=0 (File sharing thread discussing SMB/ scan to drive, SMBUp talk starts on page 3, and dev notes on p 4)

Alternately, has anyone tried MacPorts to install Samba? http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20120401160655922 (MacPorts install guide)

Both of these are in reference to Lion, but since they both essentially are just installing a protocol they may still work.

I would have to go through IT to get this enabled, so I would like to know if it works before I go try to wheedle my way into their hearts though lol. Anyone willing to try it out?

[eta] Also note that SMBUp is basically a front-end to do exactly the same install as the MacPorts version, without having to dl Xcode etc.

The search works again! I've put together a new file server running Ubuntu 13.10 with samba 3.6.18. The client is OS X 10.8.5. No problem to search the Linux shared drive connected using Finder.

An older file server from Synology which uses samba 3.6.2 works too, but it has to be connected via Finder->Go->Connect to Server and then "cifs://server" (somebody was already suggesting that here). It does not work as nicely as the new file server though. Finder shows even a spinning wheel in the corner of its window indicating that it is still searching when connected to the new file server. It does not appear on the older server.

Both servers use SMB2 so I do not know where exactly is the difference, but the bottom line is the new samba server works perfectly fine with Mac's file sharing 🙂

P.S.: I managed to get going also Timemachine on the new Ubuntu server. Works beautifully and no need of tweaks on the OS X client. One can select even an icon that appears in Finder for that device 😎

LostAccount wrote:

For the time being, you may want to try:

sudo mdutil -i off (the path to your NAS drive)

You can leave a space after the word 'off ' and then drag and drop the NAS drive icon into the terminal window to complete the path for you.

Then run:

sudo mdutil -i on (the path to your NAS drive)

I will be happy to help in anyway I can and I hope this helps.

Kind Regards

This solved my problem. I believe my problem was I installed OS X Server and set up some VPN shared folders.... messed with permissions and index.

I was able to solve this problem in Mavericks by following this post: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2409.

Neither of these solved my problem. The network drive (when indexing is force enabled with mdutil) will continually attempt to index, but never complete. I let it try for a couple of weeks straight before giving up. I have tried the add and remove from spotlight version as well, to no avail.

It used to work perfectly on 10.4 :/ My workflow is completely messed up now and I have to resort to going outside of the program I'm using to a third party search program (easyfind) instead of searching within the dialog boxes for open/place/etc.

The new SMB protocol just isn't working properly.

I found something which has dramaticaly speeded up my network and helped with spotlight search as well. It's not a solution for all, but it maybe helps. Try to get rid off IPv6 on all sides, especially if your shares run under Windows. I switched it off in the ethernet adapter preferencies. It boosted up all shares under Finder and helped me to search files more fluently. Tested on Maverics, disks shared from Windows 7 through CIFS.

At any given point, there's probably 50-70 people using the drives I would need to re-index. This does not work for me. I finally gave up and installed Easy Find. It's not ideal, but at least it's giving me results.

I have Mac os versions 10.9.2 and external NAS - WD MyCloud.

I face a similar problem, namely:

1. NAS it is constantly disconnected from system, it is necessary to remount a necessary external folder manually

2. Spotlight does not look for data on NAS. Forced start of indexation on NAS does not help.

Whether there is what that decision of the specified problem?

In my local network, also there is a computer on Windows 7, at it what or problems with connection and work on the files placed on NAS do not arise.

Easy Find takes forever.

The Mac Find File and Spotlight function, makes me long for Windows 8.

If you buy a new Mac - WARNING!! be careful to remember where you put each file AND each file folder, because your Mac won't be able to find it ever again.

You can reindex, use spotlight, (which will find lots of unrelated files,) or wait 5 minutes for EasyFind to find lots of unrelated files. You might get lucky and find the file you were working on 10 minutes prior.

You probably will want to buy a Windows 8 machine to catalogue your Mac Files before your Mac loses them, after they've been saved to a folder your Mac also won't be able to find.

When you budget for a new Mac, include the cost of the new Windows machine to help find files.

Steve Jobs, we miss you! (you must be very busy rolling in your grave!)

I see MACS on the decline - Thanks for nothing Apple!

Hi Midtime

Please try the following:

1 Make sure indexing is 'on' for the SMB, FTP or whatever remote volume by plugging this into the terminal, "sudo mdutil -i on "(path-to-smb-volume), for the part in brackets just drag and drop the remote volume into the terminal window, make sure there is a space after "on " in the preceding command I entered in quotes

2 The index is stored locally on the client's volume, the SMB/FTP server MUST remount with exactly the same name each time or it can't pair up the server with the local index.

Give it time to index, leave them overnight if you wish but give it time, this should work.

I ran this command after mounting the volumes, I only tried FTP and it solved the issue. I have yet to try SAN SMB volumes.

--I might also recommend you keep those network volumes attached to the mac in question at all times because when they get unmounted spotlight can't index them and if days go by between mounts and many changes occur on the network volume, spotlight won't account for them right away, this is obvious.

Spotlight is not trawling files on remote servers, it keeps metadata on the files so it is much more complex than a simple trawl. In terms of the slow EasyFind, you may want to read the documentation to understand how to perform a more efficient search. Your network or how busy the server is may impede the speed at which the search results come back.

I can try to help you further might you might want to leave more details.

One other thing, it helps to set Finder Preferences to search the current folder. In other words if you are facing the network volumes directory in a Finder window, this Finder preference option will search the current folder without having to do further clicks. This is my personal default choice.

My setup is as follows:

Intel xServe running 10.7.5 Server

Drive Bays 2 and 3 set up as a mirrored raid as a share point formated OS Extended (Journaled)

Client computers range from older iMacs running 10.5 to MacBookPro running 10.5 to newer iMacs running 10.8

All connect via AFP

none of the clients can search the share point via finder

I have attempted all of the various suggestions on this thread.

Two questions:

Any other options to make this work?

Is this issue fixed in newer versions of Server?

Seriously, what is the point of a server if a client can not search the drive contents?