Spotlight Server Search not working (unknown indexing state)

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arnede Author

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Spotlight Server Search not working (unknown indexing state)

I am runinng OS X Yosemite Server on a Mac mini and OS X Yosemite on a MacBook.

On the client, Spotlight and the Finder search window do not find any results on the server volume.

Client:

$ mdutil -s /Volumes/Groups

/Volumes/Groups:

Server search enabled.

Server:

$ sudo mdutil -s /Groups

/Groups:

Error: unknown indexing state.

I tried rebooting the server, mdutil -i off and back on, mdutil -E ... still getting the same "unknown indexing state". The /Groups directory on the server was migrated from an older Mac mini running an older Mac OS Server version.

Any help would be appreciated!

Posted on Jan 4, 2015 1:09 PM

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Answer 1

arnede Author

Level 1

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Jan 8, 2015 2:00 PM in response to arnede

Ok, I made it work for me. Not sure if it is really supposed to be done like that, but it seems to work:

I manually assigned read permissions to the _spotlight user (like it was visible in earlier OS X server versions in the Server app).

In Yosemite, I had to this in Terminal:

sudo chmod +a "user:_spotlight allow list,search,readattr,readextattr,readsecurity,file_inherit,directory_inherit" /Groups/*

Use "ls -lae" to see the ACL permissions on the command line.

Afterwards, I could use the Server app's "Storage" tab, to see the freshly assigned Spotlight permission with "Edit Permissions", and to "Propagate Permissions" to all children of the directories beneath /Groups.

Reindexing took some time, but finally I can search the server from the client.

mdutil -s still shows the same "unknown indexing state", but I think mdutil -s only works on volumes, not on normal directories. So it can probably be ignored.

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Answer 2

May 5, 2015 7:54 AM in response to arnede

Hi

I have a rather similar problem to yours - I am running a Mac mini as a server with a thunderbolt raid connected for data storage

If I search locally on the server it finds what it should, but when I connect to it via afp or smb, it finds nothing. I have tried your trick above, but still without any luck.

So I would just ask if it still works for you and if you can think of anything else you did?

Both server and client is 10.10.3

Thanks,

Peter

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