Q: Unable to search network drives with Lion...

Hello pepa_u

I have entered your commands but get stuck at the mdimport -Vp ./sharename

Here is what I do and the results.

mdimport -Vp /Volumes/ftp.dolby.co.uk

The terminal window just sits there after I press the return key, is this expected? There is no verbosity that sends me feedback indicating whether something is happening.

The same is true if I use mdimport -Vp /Volumes/dvs-san-nl1 (the name of one of our SMB SAN drive)

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Could you please clarify as I am excited by some of the positive feedback by MikeAlx68 who seems to have gotten positive results with AFP servers.

I personally connect to SMB and FTP servers most of the day and the commands you propose would be a godsend (hopefully Apple will just fix this). Hope to hear back from you.

Cheers!

I think that it writes messages only if there is an error or problem. You can open Activity Monitor after you run the command and check whether mdimport and/or mds runs and uses some CPU time. It might take rather long to create the index.

Yes, it writes error messages (I got quite a lot of them!). You can check if mdimport is running by opening a new terminal window and typing ps (enter), then looking to see if mdimport is one of the processes running (or if you're sensible like pepa you can use Activity Monitor in the utilities folder). In my case it took well over an hour to index about 500 gigs of data across ethernet.

What does the second step (mdimport -Vp ./shareName) do? If I've got a share named abc123...I type in mdimport -Vp ./abc123 and I get back an error that says Error loading /Library/Spotlight/Microsoft Office.mdimporter/Contents/MacOS/Mirosoft Office. Anyone know why I'm getting that error? Thanks.

Maybe Microsoft hasn't updated its mdimporter (plugin that allows content of office files to be searched by spotlight) to 64 bit. Just sudo rm -rf /Library/Spotlight/Microsoft Office.mdimporter and get rid of that Microsoft crap.

Btw, has anyone been able to confirm this:

MikeAlx68wrote:

 

Nice one pepa_u - this seems to have resolved my problem with AFP shares. The database even appears to survive a reboot/remount, and kept track of new additions

On all the machines where I tried this so far, none would update the index on its own (Lion Server, Lion/SL clients).

The first thing I did was bung some new files and folders across, and it seemed to index them immediately. But these were all created on the client machine. What I've subsequently discovered is that some existing folders don't seem to be indexed (don't appear in search results) - but when I open them on the client machine they get added to the index. Incidentally, folders that haven't yet been indexed take a little while to list their contents, whereas indexed ones display almost instantaneously.

I also got some errors with Microsoft Office files, but am assuming that's because they're probably Windows files and Spotlight is expected Mac ones. Postscript files seem to be a source of errors too. Personally I'm not too bothered about file contents - most of the time we'll be searching for file or folder name patterns.

Gregory, the mdimport command analyses the files and folders on the specified volume and builds the local metadata database. This is a database that holds information about the names and contents of files and folders.

Just wanna let you guys know that Forklift ( http://itunes.apple.com/en/app/forklift/id412448059?mt=12 is currently on sale in the Mac App Store, from €24 down to €0,79. Besides offering dual-pane views, FTP upload and a ton of other stuff, it also allows to choose between a Spotlight search and a direct file name search on a folder, which does work on a network share, too. It doesn't search for file content however.

Hi Focker

Thanks for the headsup. As mentioned very early in this thread, someone was nice enough to offer a tip on "EasyFind" — also to be found on the App Store. The cost is Free. So if all you need to do with 10.7 is augment search as it appears to be a bug by some claims made here, then it's a free option and very easy to use.

I should mention that ForkLift is a great app, for 0.79 Euro it is a steal! Note, Forklift is not the same as Forklift 2!

Thanks for the tip!

How do I try the 3rd option you suggested when my NAS doesn't show up in Disk Utility at all? It's unmountable there. I see it in the Finder, however, but can't be searched there. Using Lion and a QNAP NAS with latest firmware.

I don't think that apple will create a fix for this problem, I have read previously that apple switched their SMB services and they are trying to be stubborn and not revert back to the one that everyone was working on. Apple, oh how you dissapoint me.

Hello,

for all an information: The same problem we have got at some customers too. But in our office we've got a sbs 2008 R2 on its shared volumes we are able to search using MacOS X 10.7.4, there is no problem. At this time we don't know why, but we're still working on it to find out what are the differences between the customers and our server (all are sbs 2008 R2).

Well I actually found a solution, well my boss did, he basically added the shared drives into the spotlight privacy settings. The restarted the computer, and the removed it from the spotlight privacy tab, then restarted the computer again. Once he did that, everything started to work again. The search function was able to find all of the files on the server, however its taking some time to index, but nonetheless its a simple solution to a foolish problem.

Well, I'd like to report that this does not work for me.  Spotlight does not start indexing the network volume, even after the second reboot.

Oh well..

Sometimes I just love Apple.  Running mdimport -Vp /Volumes/z, I get:

Incorrect start/end range ordering; fixing.

Incorrect start/end range ordering; fixing.

Range {0x0000, 0xFFFF} is not 1-dimensional; handling as a special case.

Range {0x0000, 0xFFFF} is not 1-dimensional; handling as a special case.

Incorrect start/end range ordering; fixing.

Incorrect start/end range ordering; fixing.

Incorrect start/end range ordering; fixing.

Incorrect start/end range ordering; fixing.

Incorrect start/end range ordering; fixing.

Incorrect start/end range ordering; fixing.

Incorrect start/end range ordering; fixing.

Incorrect start/end range ordering; fixing.

Incorrect start/end range ordering; fixing.

2012-06-16 10:49:13.886 mdimport[964:303] *** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '*** -[NSConcreteMutableData setLength:]: absurd length: 18446744073709551615, maximum size: 9223372036854775808 bytes'

*** First throw call stack:

(

          0   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff97d6df56 __exceptionPreprocess + 198

          1   libobjc.A.dylib                     0x00007fff92000d5e objc_exception_throw + 43

          2   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff97d6dd8a +[NSException raise:format:arguments:] + 106

          3   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff97d6dd14 +[NSException raise:format:] + 116

          4   Foundation                          0x00007fff8f70d39c -[NSConcreteMutableData setLength:] + 120

          5   mdimport                            0x0000000107b0f741 mdimport + 55105

          6   mdimport                            0x0000000107b05724 mdimport + 14116

          7   mdimport                            0x0000000107b0a9c2 mdimport + 35266

          8   libdispatch.dylib                   0x00007fff91c6dc79 _dispatch_barrier_sync_f_invoke + 33

          9   mdimport                            0x0000000107b051cd mdimport + 12749

          10  mdimport                            0x0000000107b10e7c mdimport + 61052

          11  mdimport                            0x0000000107b10b26 mdimport + 60198

          12  mdimport                            0x0000000107b04359 mdimport + 9049

          13  mdimport                            0x0000000107b03b34 mdimport + 6964

)

terminate called throwing an exceptionAbort

Nice.

Wouldn't it be great if nobody purchased Mountain Lion until Apple fixed this. Sadly, I'm sure we'll all rush out and buy it on the off-chance. Me included.