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Error says Spotlight server is disabled.

I suspect this will work on lion too. I upgraded to mountain lion to hopefully fix the spotlight but that didnt do it.
Error says

Spotlight server is disabled.


I have tried every line command to re-enable my Spotlight because it didnt work. Nothing worked until i found this link.


The fix is here

http://osxdaily.com/2011/12/10/disable-or-enable-spotlight-in-mac-os-x-lion/


The command that is mentioned as a fix is this


sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist


After doing this that stupid message "Spotlight server is disabled" went aaway and spotlight started indexing again. Thank God! This took a long time to find the correct solution.

Thought I'd share.

MacBook Pro

Posted on Apr 29, 2013 5:38 PM

Reply
7 replies

Jan 8, 2017 9:23 AM in response to Bosmankb

This worked and then when I tried to search it had the same error message as originally. I reentered this code into Terminal tried again but it didn't work. I restarted computer and same error.


mini-Mac-3:~ xxxxxxxx mdutil -s /

/:

Indexing and searching disabled.

mini-Mac-3:~ xxxxxxxxx sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

Password:

/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist: service already loaded

mini-Mac-3:~ xxxxxxx mdutil -s /

/:

Indexing and searching disabled.


Did I miss a step that I needed to get spotlight to actually begin indexing?


Mac mini (Late 2014) macOS Sierra v 10.12.2

Nov 26, 2013 2:04 PM in response to Bosmankb

Thanks for posting. I've not had this happen to me before but the fixes mentioned elsewhere failed to work.


Adding the drive to the Privacy tab in Spotlight preferences failed as it said an unknown error had occured. It had also mentioned that I didn't have the correct permissions.


sudo mdutil -i on also failed and just kept saying it was disabled.


but the fix above has now sorted it and spotlight is back indexing - Cheers 😎

Error says Spotlight server is disabled.

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