Spotlight not working correctly

Hi Christopher (and everyone else affected by this issue),

I'm not totally sure I'm having the same issue as everyone else since my Spotlight seems to have never indexed after I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion. I discovered the problem when tyring to set up a bootcamp partition and finding that Finder showed 90GB free and Disk Utility (and consequently bootcamp assistant) showed only 68GB free of 250 on my 2009 MBP. On the advice of Apple tech support I forced a reindex (or I guess maybe just index) of my HDD. Adding and removing the entire disk from the Privacy tab on Spotlight did not start an index so I had to start it through Terminal. Since starting the indexing, Spotlight has moved from 3 days to now up to 2 weeks. (FWIW, I could/can still make TM backups to my external drive just fine).

I'm trying your fix by adding /private/var/folders to the Privacy tab on Spotlight. Simply adding the directory did nothing. Spotlight continued to report "About 2 weeks" to index my HDD.

I then went in to Terminal and disabled indexing using the two commands you suggested (1. sudo mdutil -i off / and 2. sudo mdutil -E). I then restarted indexing using sudo mdutil -i on.

It has been approximately ten minutes and Spotlight is still estimating the time it will take to complete the index.

I will post here again to let you know if it completes the index or not. If it does not, I will try deleting the priate/var/folders directory and then restarting the index and post my results.

If anyone wants more information about my particular system/problem, just let me know and I will post.

Thank you all for your help (especially Christopher)

Well I tried it on 10.8.2

It didn't seem to work the first time, and I thought that I had completely stopped Spotlight from working.
I did it again and Spotlight returned to normal, and TM backed up. Previously TM was just sitting on "Preparing Backup"

Dear all,

I managed to get Spotlight working by doing the follwoing:

Stop spotlight using sudo mdutil -a -i off

In th spotlight control panel, under the Privacy Tab, put all your disks

Restart Spotlight using sudo mdutil-a -i on

Erase the spotlight database sudo mdutil -a -E

Things look OK (so far). Time machine started to backup at a reasonable speed but more than what was changed since the upgrade. I'll keep you posted in a few hours how things are going.

Martin

I tried adding /private/var/folders to the Privacy tab of Spotlight and it did not help. Deleting the folders as per your earlier suggestion and then restarting did work however.

Thanks.

Hi all,

I've had this problem and thanks for the tips. The fix described above (disable indexing, remove /var/folders/* ...) worked yesterday but the problem returned today!

I've noticed that apple have released a supplemental update to 10.7.5 that is supposed to address this issue (available through software update) so I'm hoping that will put it to bed.

Apple just released 10.7.5 supplemental that is meant to address this specific issue.

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1599?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

This update solved my indexing spotlight and time capsule backup issues.

Thanks

I have OS 10.4.11 and my spotlight is not working. What should I do, please?

Checked for Lion update and found 10.7.5 Supplemental Update, it seems to have solved my slow & continuously long indexing.

I have 10.6.8 and mine is not working now. Did you get an answer to your problem with Spotlight?

I'm sorry. The Spotlight did come back on my 10.4.11. I cleared the cache and emptied the trash and unlocked a file (that should not have had anything to do with anything as it was a list of writers' charities) that had become mysteriously locked. I then gave up. Turned off the computer. The next time I logged in, all was magically fine.

It was a solution, but not an answer, because I cannot say whether Spotlight came back by coincidence or because I had too much trash.

I upgraded to 10.7.5 and spotlight is still telling me that i have 7 days remaining on index. Also I tried to install 10.7.5 supplemental update but that said my volume was invalid for the update, not sure why.

Help please, it's impossible to use my comp with out being able to search for things!

Did you try this:

• Disabling Spotlight
• Deleting existing index
• Deleting /var/folders/*
• Re-enabling Spotlight

?

Just wanted to note that Christopher Murphy's solution worked for me (this is on 10.6.8):

sudo mdutil -i off /

sudo mdutil -E /

sudo rm -Rf /var/folders/*

Reboot.

sudo mdutil -i on /