Can't find folder in Spotlight

Question

I have been downloading PDFs from the French Natl Library; once loaded into Safari, I open them with Preview and then rename and save them locally. I forgot to change the destination folder on one of them, and it saved to a folder called "tmp", inside a folder called "private" (which also contains the following folders: "etc", "tftpboot", and "var"). None of this shows up in Spotlight searches, and neither does the name of the doc, even though I can see it in the "open recent" menu in Preview (I got the folder info by choosing "save as"). I can of course just re-save to the correct destination, but I now know there is a copy of this (very large) file (as well as others) somewhere on my drive that I cannot locate. I've looked everywhere I can think of, but somehow can't find them. Suggestions welcome. Thanks! JL
MBP 15" 2.16 core duo   Mac OS X (10.4.9)  

Answer 1

You can get Spotlight to search within the OS's hidden folders and other system-level places by modifying the _rules.plist file in /.Spotlight-V100/. This is mine:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>EXCLUDE</key>
<array/>
<key>INCLUDE</key>
<array>
<string>/System</string>
<string>/Library</string>
<string>/Developer/ADC Reference Library</string>
<string>/etc</string>
<string>/private</string>
<string>/usr</string>
<string>/bin</string>
<string>/sbin</string>
</array>
<key>NOTE</key>
<string>Specify paths to include or exclude, preceeding rules which target user-homes with ~/</string>
</dict>
</plist>
G4 450 MP Gigabit   Mac OS X (10.4.9)