How to get OS X to index my Network Volumes with Spotlight?

2

2

I have multiple volumes on an Infrant ReadyNAS mounted with AFP via Ethernet at startup on my iMac. Currently Spotlight does not index these volumes (running Snow Leopard).

Is there anyway to get Spotlight to index these volumes and keep the indexes fresh to speed up searching?

I'm a bit annoyed this doesn't happen out of the box as Spotlight will index mounted Firewire drives.

I have no problem working with shell scripts or applescript to make this happen, so any solution is welcome.

Thanks!

Darren Newton

Posted 2010-01-30T17:54:46.563

Reputation: 1 228

Answers

3

You can have spotlight index networked volumes using mdutil with it's -i switch (indexing).

example:

mdutil /Volumes/ldm -i on

the only caveat is that you must do this each time you mount the drive. There are various expansions on this and workarounds to make things easier in the article linked to above.

John T

Posted 2010-01-30T17:54:46.563

Reputation: 149 037

Okay ran the above, got: /Volumes/webwork: Indexing enabled. - but that Volume doesn't show up as an option in search results, nor does it seem like Spotlight is indexing it. – Darren Newton – 2010-02-01T13:30:51.420

Is the spotlight icon flashing? You have to give it a while to index. Even longer than normal since it's a network volume. – John T – 2010-02-01T13:36:41.797

No, no flashing. NAS volume is mounted via AFP. Is there a Spotlight logfile anywhere I can look at? – Darren Newton – 2010-02-01T13:38:25.020

Is there a .Spotlight-V100 file at the root of the network volume? If spotlight can't write to the volume, it can't save an indexing file. – John T – 2010-02-01T13:48:21.147

I think this is only possible with HFS volumes. Running sudo mdutil -p /Volumes/webwork gave me Error: datastore publishing not implemented. – Darren Newton – 2010-02-01T13:50:11.920

I'm positive you can use non-HFS volumes, because I lent a friend of mine a FAT32 formatted USB stick, and I got it back with all that clutter on it -- .Trashes, .Spotlight-V100 and so on (he uses a Mac). – John T – 2010-02-01T14:07:16.670

I think the key to you last comment is USB stick. Spotlight searches mounted Firewire/USB drives fine, I'm trying to index an NAS mounted via Ethernet. – Darren Newton – 2010-02-01T15:40:20.140

Maybe EasyFind would be better ( http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/freeware/index.html ). I know for a fact that it works with NAS volumes: http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=14322

– John T – 2010-02-01T16:34:03.353

Asked: 2010-01-30T17:54:46.563

Viewed: 17 977 times

Active: 2010-02-01T15:42:30.493