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Unable to search network drives with Lion...

After installing Lion, I have found I am unable to search network drives (Windows network) like I used with Snow Leopard. Any suggestions?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Jul 21, 2011 8:01 AM

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504 replies

Jul 23, 2011 4:38 PM in response to tomfromnewtown

I have many network drive and they all work.


Maybe you can check a few things


1. In system's preferences -> spotlight -> Privacy

check to be sure your network drive is not in it.


2. In activity Monitor

Check if mdworker and/or mds are running (could be a longer name - see link below)

It seems Lion need to re-index everything

if they are running it mean the indexing is not over yet.


if they are not running

an easy way to force sportlight to re-index is:

1. In system's preferences -> spotlight -> Privacy add the drive you want to re-index

2. Quit System's preferences

3. Logout of your sessions

4. Login again :-)

5. In system's preferences -> spotlight -> Privacy remove the drive you want to re-index

6. Wait.. a faily long time. You should see mdworker and/or mds running


Hope this help.


Process info

http://triviaware.com/macprocess/all#M

Jul 23, 2011 5:15 PM in response to Franco Borgo

thanks Franco. When I tried to add an exception for the drive in spotlight, I selected the drived from the 'shared' list in the dialog, unfortunately the CHOOSE button remains grayed out.


Also, I checked the processes - mdworker is running but us using between 0 to 0.1%. I've had the mac on for a couple of days now so would expect that indexing would be completed by now.


In snow leopard, a search on a network drive in the "shared" area of the finder would show that the drive was being searched through the grayed out spinning asterisk but in lion there is no indication at all that a search is occurring.

Jul 23, 2011 6:24 PM in response to Vance Jackson

I'm having the same issue with the Finder in Lion not returning any results in a search over an SMB share even though there are clearly matching files present. I'm able to search an AFP share on my Lion Mac Mini with no problem.


The SMB share doesn't appear in the Spotlight Privacy settings. I tried running a manual reindex on it with mdutil but was told that indexing is disabled. So maybe a bug of some sort?

Jul 23, 2011 8:58 PM in response to Franco Borgo

Funnily enough I did update the QNAP firmware 2 days ago but it didn't fix the issue. I've also disabled Little Snitch and Virusbarrier v6, still no joy.


When I tried running the mdutil command I got the following error:

Error: invalid path `/Volume/mediashare' - where mediashare is what is showing in the shared heading in the finder.


Have I entered the command incorrectly?


I've also tried accessing my Windows 7 share and am getting 'Connection: failed'. When I click on Connect As... it now just shows 'Connecting'.


Update: a reboot fixed the Wondows 7 connection issues but not the other problem.


Message was edited by: tomfromnewtown

Jul 24, 2011 3:16 PM in response to tomfromnewtown

Ok, was able to check the status of indexing. It is confirmed as being enabled on all drives. I also used Onyx to rebuild the spotlight index.


Problem still exists. Funnily enough, if I do a search within a network share folder for a folder name, the results appear, but only at the top level of that folder ie. the search will not look within folders on the drive.


Will try calling Apple support today to determine next steps.

Unable to search network drives with Lion...

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