How can I make OSX index a network share for spotlight?

I am using a QNAP NAS with SMB network shares, which I mount with OS X Mavericks. They are not searchable, as far as I know because of the indexing of network share is by default not activated.

To force the OS to index them I activated this via mdutils. But this is no solutions. This makes spotlight to index the share once. But I want spotlight to index it always and keep it up to date. I have a huge amount of documents & fotographs, which is very difficult to manage without being searchable.

Unfortunately the only solution I found in the www was the mdutils-way, which seems not to work, maybe only works not for me.

I would appreciate any assistance,

Thank you,

Stefan

iMac (27-inch Mid 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)

Posted on Jan 31, 2014 2:08 AM

Top-ranking reply

John Lockwood

Level 6

13,697 points

Posted on Jun 13, 2014 2:39 AM

The way Spotlight works on a Mac server is that -

There is a special server process running to do the indexing automatically - normally by monitoring file system changes i.e. modifying a file or creating/deleting files
The use of a special Spotlight system account and the automatic addition via ACL records to allow this system account to have access to every file and folder

With a server obviously the usual situation is that there are multiple different users and each user normally has different access permissions such that userA may not be able to access files owned by userB. Therefore userA is not going to be able to access and index files restricted to userB, hence as described above the special Spotlight system account on a Mac server.

Spotlight on a Mac server is also clever enough to not only be able to index files owned by everyone, but to also only return the search results that user is allowed to access, therefore you will not see in the list of results files private to other users.

Realistically this sort of system has to be done on the server itself, therefore it is the server supplier who has to provide this capability. So in your case QNAP.

Unfortunately Spotlight is proprietary to Apple so no-one else can add it to their product. You would still be able to do a basic filename search but not a file content search. There are some third-party products you can buy which can do their own file content indexing and these provide their own search clients. I used to work for a company and run the IT for them and we used a tool called 'Sonar' which did this. See http://www.virginiasystems.com/products_s.html (I would not advise buying this particular solution now - it is possitively ancient and Spotlight would be the better choice.)

A possible option would be to have a Mac server and have the Mac server mount the QNAP as a drive, and then have the Mac server re-share the QNAP. Mac clients would then access it via the Mac server. The Mac server would then handle all the user-authentication i.e. logins, and would also do the Spotlight indexing. This would add a network traffic overhead and this could be reduced by having two network connections on the Mac server, one to the LAN with the Mac clients, and a second dedicated on just to the QNAP.

Some people use iSCSI or NFS to connect to the QNAP (or similar NAS system), while the Mac clients would use AFP or SMB to connect to the Mac server as normal.

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29 replies

slayer75

Level 1

19 points

Jan 10, 2016 6:03 AM in response to stefanfromeuskirchen

https://www.houdah.com/houdahSpot/?lang=en

This solves a few other issues with Spotlight too, like parts of words. eg. "10111897543" type "8975" and Spotlight cannot find it, only "1011" etc.

I like this more than EasyFind. Hope someone likes it, I never paid originally and it was still very useable.

OS X 10.8.5 on Mac Pro 2009, & OS X 10.9.5 iMac 2010.

Eric Root

Level 10

685,275 points

Jun 12, 2014 2:42 PM in response to stefanfromeuskirchen

Maybe one of these programs can do what you want.

EasyFind – Spotlight Replacement

Find Any File

Feb 3, 2015 7:36 AM in response to stefanfromeuskirchen

Yes, it's a God **** shame; that AppleCare Support, has no clou whatsoever.......what kind of problems; mixed-platform users on a daily-base have regarding (AFB) - SMB1/2/3 connecting, searching(spotlight) and using files!!

Upgraded to Yosemite and the Saga continues.......

Regarding compatibility Windows Server 2008R2 shares, AppleCare Support says:

Check compatibility at Vendor (***? Microsoft...)

Apple should make rock-solid protocol solutions and pro-activ help out customers!

Searching on SMB2 and AFP(OldSchool) is dead slow and cumbersome.

Does anyone know if Extreme-Z IP is the Holy Grail even with SMB-connected server shares with Yosemite Adobe Cloud users??

Oct 7, 2015 9:34 AM in response to John Lockwood

I am so frustrated trying to get indexing and searching working. I have actually put an apple server in place and I still cant seem to get searching to work. I have security and permissions working correctly, but I can't get searching to work. I can't even get file name searching to work. I am very new to Apple networking and this has been a major source of frustration...not being able to search full-text.

When I start searching from the finder and use the option to search Shared Drives, file name searching works, but not on my new Mac server. Content searching does not work on the non-Mac servers. But name searching seems to work. When I choose to search just the new Mac Server folders, no searching works.

Do I need to someone turn on indexing with some terminal command? I work with 5 attorneys and not having good full-text searching is really poor.

Oct 8, 2015 9:44 AM in response to garyleefromsaintpaul

I am in the process of trying to get this working for a client. It had worked a while back, but now does not. I THINK that it might have to do with sharing over SMB vs AFP - the little bits of info I can find seem to indicate that it will only work over AFP

See here for example: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/164443/does-os-x-yosemite-support-spot light-on-network-drives

Tonight I might try turning off SMB on the Yosemite server (it currently does both SMB and AFP) and see if that gets it working.

Nov 8, 2015 2:08 AM in response to jbosvark

Even searching for filenames does not work reliably. Notice the word "search", not "index lookup". Has Apple forgotten how to do a normal real-time search of folders? You know, like the way it worked before Spotlight? Apple assumes that Mac users will only want to search Mac formatted volumes that are connected to other Macs.

Nov 29, 2015 3:27 PM in response to jbosvark

I don't care if the searching is indexed or not. I just want to get accurate results for something as simple as searching for file names. Spotlight only appeared in Mac OS 10.4, but the Mac operating system and shared drives have been around much longer. How in the world did people manage to find anything before Spotlight?

For comparison, has anyone tried searching the same network share from a Windows system to see if Windows searching works any better? If Windows searching happens to work better, is Windows indexing that network share or not? If Windows is not indexing that network share but it is still returning more accurate results, then what the heck is the problem with Mac OS?

Nov 21, 2016 8:09 AM in response to garyleefromsaintpaul

I am an attorney and work with two other attorneys. They use Windows and I use Mac. Or did. Now that MacOS can no longer search the NAS for our work files, I have to stop using the Mac. As you know, time = money in the legal world, and we can't to have me wasting time trying to locate files that should be promptly accessible. They have no problems on the Windows side. But Mac seems to be dropping the ball and not really even caring.

Dec 7, 2016 12:53 AM in response to stefanfromeuskirchen

I have the same problem, every single day a take almost 1h open the folders to on external server just to index the name of the files for Finder find the files, but this is not solution.

If is possible to index the files what have indexed in a day before is a lot so better, fast and easy that need to wait to finder read the files from folders.

Dec 8, 2016 12:06 AM in response to Rick Fernandez1

Unfortunately I don't have chance to change to external HD, have more Desktop using the files, and if i can save the index files for futures searching is a nice plus.

Im using Path Finder but each day I need to open the folders to searching the files inside more fast than without open the folders.

Feb 2, 2014 12:07 AM in response to stefanfromeuskirchen

No idea anyone?

Jun 11, 2014 6:37 AM in response to stefanfromeuskirchen

Its very very surprising and quite frankly .....why should it be acceptable.

Have you found any solution since feb?

Its quite amazing more people dont have a problem with this.

Jun 13, 2014 11:47 AM in response to John Lockwood

Is there a way to make SL work with a windows server?

Nov 21, 2016 8:21 AM in response to jbosvark

Search used to work fine, through Lion. After Lion, it no longer works on external NAS drives.

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How can I make OSX index a network share for spotlight?