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10.6.8 Server: Spotlight stops working for clients after fresh installation and updates

Problem:

On 2013-02-22, I reinstalled my Xserve with fresh 10.6.3 and upgraded it to 10.6.8 OS X Server. Spotlight used to be working perfectly for clients to search over the network but now it is not working. Administrators doing local spotlight search on Xserve server side is searchable. Clients with less privileges searching files across the network to the server will receive null result. Administrators searching files across the network is still working.


I believe it has something to do with the update packages and some security improvement bugs introduced in late 2012 or early 2013.


All my clients Macs are in either 10.7.5 and 10.8.2.


Can anyone confirm this? All my staff members in the company cannot do the spotlight search to the server now!

Posted on Feb 21, 2013 9:58 AM

Reply
3 replies

Mar 19, 2013 8:44 PM in response to maracujana

Hi, maracujana,

the problem can be solved if you allow the permssion of parental folder of your share points to have at least Read Only permission for User and Group:


permission: 644

User: Read&Write

Group: Read Only

Others: Read Only (or No Access)


In my case, it is strange that PCs can still do the search to the Snow Leopard Server by SMB protocol while Mac using AFP cannot even when the parental folder had permission 600. This could be a secure issue in Snow Leopard's SMB1.0 protocol. Note that SMB in Snow Leopard is SMB1.0, which is less secure and hence deprecated after Snow Leopard. From Lion onwards, all OS X uses SMB2.0 and/or SMB X.


Oh, yes, there is one more thing:

you may find your scanner using SMB protocol stopped functioning properly if you use (Mountain) Lion client and (Mountain) Lion server. It boils down to Apple's silent change of SMB protocol from SMB1.0 to SMB2.0. Solution? Use FTP protocol for now. Don't blame Apple too much because Apple had to follow the rules of GPLv3. The SMB issue will go on as Microsoft introduces its own SMB 3.0 protocol in Windows 8 while Apple introduces its SMB verison dubbed SMB X.


Hope this helps.

10.6.8 Server: Spotlight stops working for clients after fresh installation and updates

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