Spotlight comments over a network
Hello,
I am using spotlight comments in the GetInfo window of my files as keywords for search. Everything works fine on my computer, but as I ove the files to our server, to an archive folder, I am not able to find the files using that comments. I use both smart folders and command-F from the Finder, selecting as searching criteria "Spotlight comments" but seems that this comments are not read. I checked and the comments are still written... Do I have to activate something may be on the server? Or is something like a bug in the "find" command?
thank you for your help.
Hi, Maurizio. Welcome to the Discussions.
The Spotlight Comments field in the Get Info window is actually identical to the Get Info "Comments" field in prior versions of Mac OS X. Accordingly, Spotlight Comments are saved only on your computer. Hence the Spotlight Comments are not copied to the server.
The instructions in "Mac OS X: Get Info Comments May Not Appear for Remote Volumes" apply to Spotlight Comments as well as the old Get Info "Comments."
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Similar Messages
-
HT204014 How can I get spotlight search to work over a network running OS X Server?
I have installed OS X Server on an iMac to share its files over a network.
I can access the files fine, but if I try and search the shared folders from another Mac on the network it yields no results.
How can I get search to work as well as it does on the files on local disks.Spotlight searching of shared volumes works for me using OS X 10.10.3 Server and OS X 10.10.3 client, as follows:
If I use Spotlight to search for some content "Aaron Aardvark" the file that contains this text does not seem to show up in the immediate results, but if I select "Show All in Finder" and switch from "This Mac" to "Shared" the file "untitled text.txt" that contains it is listed.
In the past Spotlight was responsible for bringing servers to their knees, so I suspect that the above two-step process is a way of limiting server searches to cases where it is actually required.
Server 4.1 (OS X 10.10.3) seems to add the extended attributes needed to allow Spotlight to index sharepoints:
test_server3:~ admin$ ls -el /Volumes/Server\ 3\ Users/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x+ 4 admin staff 136 30 Apr 17:02 Server 3 Users
0: user:_spotlight inherited allow list,search,file_inherit,directory_inherit
test_server3:~ admin$
but in the past, e.g. Snow Leopard server, you could choose whether or not these attributes were set or not. IIRC Snow Leopard clients would always include server volumes in Spotlight searches, causing significant slow-downs on the client, so a lot of sysadmins, myself included, chose not to enable it.
C. -
Problem with using JMF audio over a network
Hiya, I'm using IBM JMF code but I'm having problems trying to get it transmit data from the MediaTransmitter to the MediaPlayerFrame.
I'm kinda new to JMF so I assume I'm missing something basis for why this doesn't work.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
MediaPlayerFrame
import javax.media.*;
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
import java.awt.event.*;
import java.io.*;
* An instance of the MediaPlayerFrame may be used to display any media
* recognized * by JMF. This is intended to be a very simple GUI example,
* displaying all possible controls for the given media type.
public class MediaPlayerFrame extends JFrame {
* The frame title.
private static final String FRAME_TITLE = "developerWorks JMF Tutorial " +
"Media Player";
* The panel title of the main control panel.
private static final String CONTROL_PANEL_TITLE = "Control Panel";
// location and size variables for the frame.
private static final int LOC_X = 100;
private static final int LOC_Y = 100;
private static final int HEIGHT = 500;
private static final int WIDTH = 500;
private final static long serialVersionUID = 1;
* The current player.
private Player player = null;
* The tabbed pane for displaying controls.
private JTabbedPane tabPane = null;
* Create an instance of the media frame. No data will be displayed in the
* frame until a player is set.
public MediaPlayerFrame() {
super(FRAME_TITLE);
System.out.println("MediaPlayerFrame");
setLocation(LOC_X, LOC_Y);
setSize(WIDTH, HEIGHT);
tabPane = new JTabbedPane();
getContentPane().add(tabPane);
/* adds a window listener so that the player may be cleaned up before
the frame actually closes.
addWindowListener(new WindowAdapter() {
* Invoked when the frame is being closed.
public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e) {
closeCurrentPlayer();
/* Closing this frame will cause the entire
application to exit. When running this
example as its own application, this is
fine - but in general, a closing frame
would not close the entire application.
If this behavior is not desired, comment
out the following line:
System.exit(0);
* Creates the main panel. This panel will contain the following if they
* exist:
* - The visual component: where any visual data is displayed, i.e. a
* movie uses this control to display the video.
* - The gain component: where the gain/volume may be changed. This
* is often * contained in the control panel component (below.)
* - The control panel component: time and some extra info regarding
* the media.
private JPanel createMainPanel() {
System.out.println("createMainPanel");
JPanel mainPanel = new JPanel();
GridBagLayout gbl = new GridBagLayout();
GridBagConstraints gbc = new GridBagConstraints();
mainPanel.setLayout(gbl);
boolean visualComponentExists = false;
// if the visual component exists, add it to the newly created panel.
if (player.getVisualComponent() != null) {
visualComponentExists = true;
gbc.gridx = 0;
gbc.gridy = 0;
gbc.weightx = 1;
gbc.weighty = 1;
gbc.fill = GridBagConstraints.BOTH;
mainPanel.add(player.getVisualComponent(), gbc);
// if the gain control component exists, add it to the new panel.
if ((player.getGainControl() != null) &&
(player.getGainControl().getControlComponent() != null)) {
gbc.gridx = 1;
gbc.gridy = 0;
gbc.weightx = 0;
gbc.weighty = 1;
gbc.gridheight = 2;
gbc.fill = GridBagConstraints.VERTICAL;
mainPanel.add(player.getGainControl().getControlComponent(), gbc);
// Add the control panel component if it exists (it should exists in
// all cases.)
if (player.getControlPanelComponent() != null) {
gbc.gridx = 0;
gbc.gridy = 1;
gbc.weightx = 1;
gbc.gridheight = 1;
if (visualComponentExists) {
gbc.fill = GridBagConstraints.HORIZONTAL;
gbc.weighty = 0;
} else {
gbc.fill = GridBagConstraints.BOTH;
gbc.weighty = 1;
mainPanel.add(player.getControlPanelComponent(), gbc);
return mainPanel;
* Sets the media locator. Setting this to a new value effectively
* discards any Player which may have already existed.
* @param locator the new MediaLocator object.
* @throws IOException indicates an IO error in opening the media.
* @throws NoPlayerException indicates no player was found for the
* media type.
* @throws CannotRealizeException indicates an error in realizing the
* media file or stream.
public void setMediaLocator(MediaLocator locator) throws IOException,
NoPlayerException, CannotRealizeException {
System.out.println("setMediaLocator: " +locator);
// create a new player with the new locator. This will effectively
// stop and discard any current player.
setPlayer(Manager.createRealizedPlayer(locator));
* Sets the player reference. Setting this to a new value will discard
* any Player which already exists. It will also refresh the contents
* of the pane with the components for the new player. A null value will
* stop the discard the current player and clear the contents of the
* frame.
public void setPlayer(Player newPlayer) {
System.out.println("setPlayer");
// close the current player
closeCurrentPlayer();
player = newPlayer;
// refresh the tabbed pane.
tabPane.removeAll();
if (player == null) return;
// add the new main panel
tabPane.add(CONTROL_PANEL_TITLE, createMainPanel());
// add any other controls which may exist in the player. These
// controls should already contain a name which is used in the
// tabbed pane.
Control[] controls = player.getControls();
for (int i = 0; i < controls.length; i++) {
if (controls.getControlComponent() != null) {
tabPane.add(controls[i].getControlComponent());
* Stops and closes the current player if one exists.
private void closeCurrentPlayer() {
if (player != null) {
player.stop();
player.close();
* Prints a usage message to System.out for how to use this class
* through the command line.
public static void printUsage() {
System.out.println("Usage: java MediaPlayerFrame mediaLocator");
* Allows the user to run the class through the command line.
* Only one argument is allowed, which is the media locator.
public static void main(String[] args) {
try {
if (args.length == 1) {
MediaPlayerFrame mpf = new MediaPlayerFrame();
/* The following line creates a media locator using the String
passed in through the command line. This version should
be used when receiving media streamed over a network.
mpf.setMediaLocator(new MediaLocator(args[0]));
/* the following line may be used to create and set the media
locator from a simple file name. This works fine when
playing local media. To play media streamed over a
network, you should use the previous setMediaLocator()
line and comment this one out.
//mpf.setMediaLocator(new MediaLocator(
// new File(args[0]).toURL()));
mpf.setVisible(true);
} else {
printUsage();
} catch (Throwable t) {
t.printStackTrace();
MediaTransmitter
import javax.media.*;
import javax.media.control.*;
import javax.media.protocol.*;
import javax.media.format.*;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.File;
* Creates a new media transmitter. The media transmitter may be used to
* transmit a data source over a network.
public class MediaTransmitter {
* Output locator - this is the broadcast address for the media.
private MediaLocator mediaLocator = null;
* The data sink object used to broadcast the results from the processor
* to the network.
private DataSink dataSink = null;
* The processor used to read the media from a local file, and produce an
* output stream which will be handed to the data sink object for
* broadcast.
private Processor mediaProcessor = null;
* The track formats used for all data sources in this transmitter. It is
* assumed that this transmitter will always be associated with the same
* RTP stream format, so this is made static.
private static final Format[] FORMATS = new Format[] {
new AudioFormat(AudioFormat.MPEG_RTP)};
* The content descriptor for this transmitter. It is assumed that this
* transmitter always handles the same type of RTP content, so this is
* made static.
private static final ContentDescriptor CONTENT_DESCRIPTOR =
new ContentDescriptor(ContentDescriptor.RAW_RTP);
* Creates a new transmitter with the given outbound locator.
public MediaTransmitter(MediaLocator locator) {
mediaLocator = locator;
* Starts transmitting the media.
public void startTransmitting() throws IOException {
// start the processor
mediaProcessor.start();
// open and start the data sink
dataSink.open();
dataSink.start();
* Stops transmitting the media.
public void stopTransmitting() throws IOException {
// stop and close the data sink
dataSink.stop();
dataSink.close();
// stop and close the processor
mediaProcessor.stop();
mediaProcessor.close();
* Sets the data source. This is where the transmitter will get the media
* to transmit.
public void setDataSource(DataSource ds) throws IOException,
NoProcessorException, CannotRealizeException, NoDataSinkException {
/* Create the realized processor. By calling the
createRealizedProcessor() method on the manager, we are guaranteed
that the processor is both configured and realized already.
For this reason, this method will block until both of these
conditions are true. In general, the processor is responsible
for reading the file from a file and converting it to
an RTP stream.
mediaProcessor = Manager.createRealizedProcessor(
new ProcessorModel(ds, FORMATS, CONTENT_DESCRIPTOR));
/* Create the data sink. The data sink is used to do the actual work
of broadcasting the RTP data over a network.
dataSink = Manager.createDataSink(mediaProcessor.getDataOutput(),
mediaLocator);
* Prints a usage message to System.out for how to use this class
* through the command line.
public static void printUsage() {
System.out.println("Usage: java MediaTransmitter mediaLocator " +
"mediaFile");
System.out.println(" example: java MediaTransmitter " +
"rtp://192.168.1.72:49150/audio mysong.mp3");
System.out.println(" example: java MediaTransmitter " +
"rtp://192.168.1.255:49150/audio mysong.mp3");
* Allows the user to run the class through the command line.
* Only two arguments are allowed; these are the output media
* locator and the mp3 audio file which will be broadcast
* in the order.
public static void main(String[] args) {
try {
if (args.length == 2) {
MediaLocator locator = new MediaLocator(args[0]);
MediaTransmitter transmitter = new MediaTransmitter(locator);
System.out.println("-> Created media locator: '" +
locator + "'");
/* Creates and uses a file reference for the audio file,
if a url or any other reference is desired, then this
line needs to change.
File mediaFile = new File(args[1]);
DataSource source = Manager.createDataSource(
new MediaLocator(mediaFile.toURL()));
System.out.println("-> Created data source: '" +
mediaFile.getAbsolutePath() + "'");
// set the data source.
transmitter.setDataSource(source);
System.out.println("-> Set the data source on the transmitter");
// start transmitting the file over the network.
transmitter.startTransmitting();
System.out.println("-> Transmitting...");
System.out.println(" Press the Enter key to exit");
// wait for the user to press Enter to proceed and exit.
System.in.read();
System.out.println("-> Exiting");
transmitter.stopTransmitting();
} else {
printUsage();
} catch (Throwable t) {
t.printStackTrace();
System.exit(0);Okay, here's the it copied out.
Media Transmitter
C:\John\Masters Project\Java\jmf1\MediaPlayer>java MediaTransmitter rtp://127.0.
0.1:2000/audio it-came-upon.mp3
-> Created media locator: 'rtp://127.0.0.1:2000/audio'
-> Created data source: 'C:\John\Masters Project\Java\jmf1\MediaPlayer\it-came-u
pon.mp3'
streams is [Lcom.sun.media.multiplexer.RawBufferMux$RawBufferSourceStream;@1decd
ec : 1
sink: setOutputLocator rtp://127.0.0.1:2000/audio
-> Set the data source on the transmitter
-> Transmitting...
Press the Enter key to exit
MediaPlayerFrame
C:\John\Masters Project\Java\jmf1\MediaPlayer>java MediaPlayerFrame rtp://127.0.
0.1:2000/audio
MediaPlayerFrame
setMediaLocator: rtp://127.0.0.1:2000/audioAs I said, it just kinda stops there, what it should be doing is opening the MediaPlayer.
"MediaPlayerFrame" and "setMediaLocator: rtp://127.0.0.1:2000/audio" are just print outs I used to track here the code is getting to. -
Time Machine over the Network: Terribly Slow
Hello,
I've been using Time Machine for over 3 years now with no issues over the network; the destination being a 2TB external Seagate connected to another iMac connected through gigabit ethernet. Everything has been working flawlessly: Every hour Time Machine would MOUNT the sparseimage it created on the disk, BACKUP the data and UNMOUNT the disk image when finished.
Until I upgraded to Lion. The above process is still working per se, however it is PAINFULLY slow! A 50MB backup can take up to AN HOUR! Searching around on the net, advised that there could be an issue with Spotlight as well, however this is not the case for me, since Spotlight finished a new index in under 30 mins. Followed every tutorial I could find on the issue, to no avail..
I then upgraded to Mountain Lion with the hope that the issue will clear itself. Cleared my old backups, resetted Time Machine by erasing its .plist file, restarted my iMac just to make sure and connected Time Machine to the network share anew, creating a "sharing only" account on the host iMac, i.e. the one that has the external HD connected through USB. Still no luck.
I painfully realize that I still have the same issue. While backing up, network traffic is under 100KB, and activity monitor does not show any backupd or mds or any similar processes taking anything over 3% of CPU time.
What could be wrong?Hello again,
Tries on the other iMac (also running 10.8.2) and things are exactly the same: Image creation takes almost half an hour, and copying crawls at under 1MB/min. While time machine image is mounted and Time Machine is "backing up", accessing ANY disk on the host Mac is VERY slow. Seems like something hogs up appleshare when Time Machine is in use. Mind you, there is insignificant network traffic as seen by Activity Monitor, as well as insignificant CPU usage while backing up.
Stopping backup and using tmutil to set the Time Machine destination to the mounted image as mounted by Finder, solves the issue again, revving up Time Machine throughput to over 20MB/sec! There is also no issues acessing the other Mac as well, under this scenario.
Up to this point, the only way I have managed to use Time Machine over a networked external HD is through the NAS server. Both configurations where I am using a Mac running 10.8.2 as a server of the external disk have failed with very low throughput while backing up. Something must be wrong in 10.8.2's afp when Time Machine is mounting the image by itself.
I may need to remind you that I have been successfully backing up to the external HD for 4 years now; something broke a few months after the client iMac was upgraded to Lion and at the time when the host iMac was upgraded to Mountain Lion. Will try to locate a Mac running some later OS X version to do some more testing.
Also reminding that I have used two distinctive iMacs and two external HD drives for my tests so far. The client iMac has remained the same, however 10.8.2 has been reinstalled on it a couple of times. Have also used an afp-enabled NAS server which worked fine with Time Machine. -
Hello,
I've been using Time Machine for over 3 years now with no issues over the network; the destination being a 1TB-limited sparseimage setup as instructed by this tutorial. The image resides on an external HD connected on a network-connected iMac. Everything has been working flawlessly: Every hour Time Machine would MOUNT the disk image on its own, BACKUP the data and UNMOUNT the disk image as well.
Until I upgraded to Lion. The above process is still working per se, however it is PAINFULLY slow! A 50MB backup can take up to AN HOUR! Searching around on the net, advised that there could be an issue with Spotlight as well, however this is not the case for me, since Spotlight finished a new index in under 30 mins.
While testing, I tried to copy a 200MB file ONTO the Time Machine disk (mounted from the sparseimage automatically by Time Machine) and it took OVER 3 hours! I then stopped Time Machine (which tool half an hour) and mounted the image via Finder and the same file copied in 4 secs!
I really don't get it; I bet both times the mounted Volume runes under the same protocol, AFP via TCP, why is it behaving so strangely when auto-mounted by Time Machine?
Next, I read about tmutil has been added to Lion upwards and that setting a mounted disk image as destination is now supported by TM. So I went on and mounted the image via the Finder, set the mounted Volume as the time machine destination via tmutil and gave the backup a try. The process went away really fast, was extremely pleased!
However: As soon as the backup finishes, the Volume EJECTS and TM reports that the next backup is to be made "when the backup disk is connected"! It will NOT mount the image by its own, neither to backup or to access old backups. But wait, there's more: Be selecting "Backup now" via the TM menu item, the Volume MOUNTS INSTANTLY and the backup takes place, with no issues whatsoever!
What I need is a TM that backs up quickly over the network and mounts its disk automatically.
Well, I guess if you had the time and will to read the above text, you may try to help, if you have a clue, that is...
Thank you.I am afraid that the information on the excellent tutorial (which I have already checked many times) don't help me much... I have two main questions:
1. Why is the TM-mounted volume so slow? Mounting the same volume through the Finder works blazing fast! Is there something special in the way TM mounts its volumes?
2. Is there a proper way to force TM to start an automatic backup, when the backup volume is not mounted? It used to work when the destination was the network volume, but does not work when the destination is set to the sparsebundle volume which inside the network volume. -
Batch Renaming loses Spotlight Comments, Os X to blame?
I posted this over at the Adobe forum for Bridge, however, I'm going to post it here too because part of me feels like this issue I'm experiencing is tied to a recent Os update: from Leopard to Snow Leopard.
I'm a photo editor for a wedding photographer and have been implementing some of my own personal workflows into his pipeline. I tend NOT to rename camera-generated files, at all, unless there's an important reason to do so. Sorting an entire wedding by "Date" works perfectly for building the proper timeline for a shoot. So camera-generated file names are perfectly okay for our needs.
When an edit is complete I'll generate JPEGs from Aperture. The resulting files will continue to carry the original RAW files names, unless there is a duplicate file name, then Aperture will add a number: "(1)" to the file, if necessary. Typically, after export, I run an Automator action that stores the file name in the Spotlight Comments. Because prior to shipping and archiving, I AM going to rename the final JPEGs sequentially: 0001_wedding, 0002_wedding, etc.
The beauty was that with the original name stored in the Spotlight comments for the JPEG, I would easily look at 0148_wedding.jpg, see that it's spotlight comments said, "Original Name: IMG_3471" and obviously know exactly what RAW image this new JPEG started as. Worked perfectly.
So process was: Export, Store Original Name in Spotlight Comments of JPEGs, Batch Rename (sequentially) based on date modified in Bridge CS4.
Well now everthing's changed. We had a system drive go down. We were running 10.5.8. When the system came back from the shop, with a new drive installed, it was/is running Snow Leopard. 10.6.3? I think. Snow Leopard, no doubt.
And now my prior workflow has been wrecked because the act of renaming, in Bridge CS4, erases all those handy Spotlight comments. However, part of me is wondering though if this issue is rooted more deeply, at the OS level? Because R-Name (Batch renaming utility) is now eradicating Spotlight comments as is an Automator action built for the same purposes. This all used to work perfectly. And the one major change that has occurred was this "upgrade" from Leopard to Snow Leopard.
So, question is: is there something I can alter in Bridge Preferences to maintain my Spotlight Comments, when batch renaming? Is this all tied to the Snow Leopard? Is there ANY renaming utility that's not going to fall victim to whatever the hang up here is?? How can I batch rename and not destroy my lovely Spotlight Comments in the process?
Thanks for your time!!Yes, this works. However, this was already part of my workflow.... and not where the trouble lies.
After exporting jpeg images from Aperture, they carry the same name of the original RAW files, from which they came. (So, IMG_8342.jpg would have started it's life as IMG_8342.CR2.) But we dont' send them out like that. We sequentially name them 0001_image.jpg, 0002_image.jpg, etc... So after renaming, how do you find the original file again, right?
BEFORE the renaming phase, I would run the "Store Original Names in Spotlight Comments" action. That way, I could look at the comments for a derivative .jpg—whose name has now changed—and determine the name of the ORIGINAL file.
After renaming, the derivative file might end up being named 0361_image.jpg, but it's Spotlight comments would say, for example, Original Name:<<IMG_8485.jpg>>. Then I would know that this particular file started off as IMG_8485.CR2.
As such, I could quickly/easily backtrack, knowing that the original RAW file was named IMG_8485.CR2
The issue is that once you've gone thru the effort to ADD these spotlight comments, if you THEN go through a re-naming step, this erases all those Spotlight Comments. That was my problem... Getting the Spotlight Comments in place was never the issue. KEEPING them there was the problem. -
Transferring spotlight comments to iPhoto
I've got several hundered scanned photos on a hard drive with spotlight comments attached.
Is there any way to transfer those spotlight comments into iPhoto's comment field when I import the files into iPhoto, or will I have to type them all in manually?
If there isn't a way to do it through iPhoto, it seems like the kind of task that an Automator script could be written to handle, but I'm not very familiar with that.Chip:
Unless you can find an Applescript that will do the job you'll probably have to enter them manually. Automator does not have any actions that I could find that could do the job. But then, I'm not overly proficient with Automator.
You might ask in the Applescript forum.
Do you Twango? -
I have never been able to save spotlight comments. Never. Over years and years. I'm trying to organize some files by comment. The comment appears. Turn off the computer. Turn on, GONE. Does this function simply not work?
I have had something similar happen. But, the data still seems to be there. I can't find the solution either.
In Terminal.app, "mdls (FILE)" shows the comments in the kMDItemFinderComment field; and, Spotlight search still finds the files as well. Unfortunately, if you make any change to the comment block in Finder, the old data disappears and it is replaced with whatever you have typed. -
Spotlight comments not available?
I've developed an internal website at work that uses PHP, MySQL, Applescript and PDF files to manage the workflow for print projects.
The basic setup is that a user "publishes" a PDF from InDesign using an Applescript (which ensures the PDF is created with standard settings and file security) and the PDF is copied to the webserver into a folder for review. The applescript then puts the designer's name into the PDF's Spotlight comments.
Someone reviews the project from a web-page, which looks in the folder and displays thumbnails of its contents. PHP runs an exec() to get the Spotlight comments, and displays the designer's name below the thumbnail, along with the date and time the PDF was "published".
$PDFcomment = exec("osascript -e 'tell app \"Finder\" to get comment of POSIX file \"$projectsFile/$shortID/$dirShort.pdf\"'");
The problem I'm running into is that this command is not consistently returning the Spotlight comment. Often the PHP webpage says it's empty, but when I go to the networked volume where these PDFs are stored and Get Info, I can see the correct comment.
The comment will only appear if I use the Finder on the machine that houses the PDF and Get Info. Subsequent viewings of the PHP webpage then return the correct comment.
How can I force the Finder to get the current Spotlight comment without having to manually check the file first?
PowerMac G4 Mac OS X (10.4.5)Running the password reset actually recreated the problem but that's ok because it helped lead me to the true cause and answer. Being a member of the wrong group can cause all sorts of annoying problems e.g. asking for authentication when deleting files, spotlight not indexing some files etc. Luckily this post http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=200711291134001 had the answer. I'll sum it up here:
I had a problem with spotlight not indexing some files especially spotlight comments. I'd tried deleting spotlight-V100 to re-index and many other things which did not work when all along it was a group membership problem.
I had upgraded from Tiger to Leopard. The GUI tools in Leopard showed my primary group was staff and nothing looked wrong until I discovered the Unix commands thanks to your great script. I didn't run the script but it was very well commented so I knew what the commands did if I ran them in terminal.
dscl . read /Groups/staff
showed I wasn't in the group staff. (even though system preferences>accounts>advanced options said i was!)
sudo dscl . append /Groups/staff GroupMembership $USER
added me to group staff.
sudo chgrp -R staff $HOME
changes group ownership on all files in home to staff.
sudo diskutil repairPermissions /
repair disk permissions.
Reboot. -
Spotlight Comments - questions, limits and opinions
My wife and I are a little behind the curve. We updated our MacBook Pros, MacPro and PowerMac G5 to Leopard early this year in part due to the fact that my testing showed that Spotlight Comments are persistent on our home ethernet - If I put identifying comments in a file's Get Info > Spotlight Comments box while it is on my MacBook's Desktop, then move it to a "file server" (a shared drive on the PowerMac or MacPro), my wife can see and modify the Comment from her MacBook. The comments almost seem to be part of the file itself (yes, Francine, we know they really are not) unlike the volatile pre-X Finder Comments. We do not normally have any Windows machines on our network and when we do we certainly do not use one as a file server. We're pretty much vanilla Apple.
Now, on to my questions:
1 - if not in the file itself, where are the Spotlight Comments actually stored? If they're in a folder's .DS_Store files, then they would disappear if you nuke those files (like when trying to fix a folder that is not properly displaying its contents) and that has not been my experience. I know that you can use mdls in the Terminal to show the comment and the other useful stuff that appears in Get Info's More Info field, but can this data get separated from the file it is connected to, or is it in that mystical Resource Fork? I'm not a developer (JavaScript is about as much code as I can handle) so I don't need the gory details. I just want to know if we can nuke Comments by unintentionally deleting some invisible file.
2 - What are the limits in Spotlight Comments? Are there any? How many characters will that field take? I am asking this since I have been trying to put info concerning an image into its Spotlight Comment field and once I close the Get Info window the Comment is gone. If I check with mdls in Terminal the image's kMDItemFinderComment field is not even created. I have been trimming off hunks of characters in the Comment and am now below 700 but it still won't take it (the file is not locked, I have full control of it, and it doesn't appear to matter what files' or folders' Comments field I try to paste it into). Is this limit documented anywhere, because I've been Googling for it all morning with no matches.
3 - if not Spotlight Comments, then what? I see DefaultFolder has an option to write Comments as "OpenMeta Tags" but what little I could understand upon looking that up made it sound like they're Spotlight Comments that are embedded into the file itself - even files that do not normally have a spot for Comments. Putting the description in the filename is much easier in X than previously, but gets a bit unwieldy very quickly. Many (but not all) image formats can accept descriptions in things like EXIF, but doing so changes its Modification Date and screws up our sorting...
4 - only tangentially related: how many years did it take for Apple to put in Safari a function that we made use of all the time in Netscape & IE in pre-X times: put the source URL of a download in the Comment field. Now why can't the Mozilla team put that in Firefox? It's not like I haven't posted that as a feature request multiple times...
I know that file "tagging" is a hot topic and I do not expect a real solution here, but if someone can confirm that there is a character limit in a file's Spotlight Comment field and let us know where or if it's documented...
Message was edited by: Notary SojakUPDATE - apparently once a file's kMDItemFinderComment field is created (I got the Comment to stick once I was below 600 characters) it can take more characters. I jut replaced the successful 595 character comment with the full 735 character comment I had initially been unable to add and it is visible from all the Macs.
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Spotlight comments disappeared
I have a folder containing close to 300 aliases to other files in another folder. I added "Spotlight Comments" to most of them. Everything seemed to work for a long time. Recently, I cut and paste some long description text to the comment field in the info of the aliases. All of a sudden, all the comments in the folder disappeared. Other folders are fine.
Did I cross the line somewhere and exceeded certain limit and corrupted some kind of database file for the folder? Can I recovered those comments because they consist of work that spanned over almost two years.I have a folder containing close to 300 aliases to other files in another folder. I added "Spotlight Comments" to most of them. Everything seemed to work for a long time. Recently, I cut and paste some long description text to the comment field in the info of the aliases. All of a sudden, all the comments in the folder disappeared. Other folders are fine.
Did I cross the line somewhere and exceeded certain limit and corrupted some kind of database file for the folder? Can I recovered those comments because they consist of work that spanned over almost two years. -
I have a customer that upgraded to 10.5 server for the spotlight comments searching on share points. They can search everything else but the comments. We have tried setting up a group with all the users having full read/write permissions. I have reindexed the share points. I can search the comments from the xserve that the raid is attached to. Just not on any of the networked computers. The networked computers are all PowerMac G5s running Tiger. I have heard that having a space in the share point can cause problems and some of the share points have space but not all and they can't search the comments on any of the share points. We have tried searching files on the root directory as well as in folders on the share points. Has anyone else had this problem or have a suggestion?
ThanksHi TD
Yes and no.
Yes it worked the way you mentioned but if I change the Spotlight Comment: on the same file to something else I can still find it via 'Fruit'. I much prefer command-space bar to call Spotlight.
How long does it take a change to a Spotlight Comment: to filter into Spotlight?
Its not the end of the world its just I was finding Spotlight really useful until I came up against this. -
Using spotlight comments to find files
Hello
I am new to this forum so please be patience with me. I would like to use keywords in the spotlight comment area to find files on our shared network. However, I am having problems with this. I can find files by name, but not by contents or spotlight comments on our shared network. Can anyone help me with this problem.
Thanks Heather
Message was edited by: Heather316To Apple Discussions!
Check out the Article: Using Spotlight to search for items
+"To organize your files so you can find them more easily, use the Spotlight Comments field in the Get Info dialog. For example, you could mark all the files for the same project with the project name, tag all your urgent files with the word "urgent," or enter a description that will help you find the file later.+
+If you want to limit your search to specific locations and attributes, open Finder and choose File > Find."+
There may be other info you can use from the Article. -
How to backup Mac Lion over the network
I have a client who asked me to set up a Lion email server for 20 users. It is running open directory for the user accounts and has a wiki set up on it as well. I have been researching backup solutions for it. The server runs in a remote data center environment and it is the only mac on the network. There are other Linux and windows machines on the same network as well. I would like a backup solution for the email and open directory database that doesn't require stopping the email service (if possible), and I would like to back up over the network (if possible).
What would be the best way to back up this server considering it needs to be in service 24/7? I am open to both free and commercial solutions. Any thoughts or comments would be very much appreciated.As the server is in a (remote) data center the first more normal approach for backing up over the network would require you to have access to a second computer in the same data center this would require additional hosting costs.
The next (network) approach would involve backing up from the server in the data center over the Internet to perhaps a machine at your own office, or another site, or a third option to use a commercial Internet based backup service.
Internet backup services include the following and I am sure plenty of others -
Mozy - http://mozy.com/
Backblaze - http://www.backblaze.com/
Carbonite - http://www.carbonite.co.uk/
Crashplan - http://www.crashplan.com/
iDrive Pro - http://www.idrive.com/index.html
Livedrive - http://www.livedrive.com/
If your backing up to your own Mac over the Internet you will need to setup a VPN link. You could in theory as one possible example, have the Mac mini in the data center also act as a VPN server so you can fully access it, then mount the volumes over AFP, then use any standard backup tool to copy that to a local volume. Retrospect would be able to do this as one example. Another way is rather than using AFP, use FTP to download everything. However unless you protect FTP behind a VPN it is these days considered very insecure.
Another approach is to use Rsync which is designed original for Unix/Linux for this exact purpose but like all Linux originated software is far from friendly. See http://www.rsync.net/resources/howto/mac_rsync.html -
Spotlight not functioning across network.
Ran into a doozy here. I am unable to pull up data from Spotlight when accessing a Snow Leopard server with Lion, Snow Leopard, or Leopard. Spotlight results work fine in Tiger, except for Spotlight comments. Not sure if there's a difference between how Tiger read Spotlight indexes compared to later OSes. Any thoughts on this?
-=Andrew=-It has been my experience that Spotlight doesn't find a lot of stuff on the drives inside the system it is running on let alone a network shared drive.
There may be a setting in Spotlight preferences to search shared network drives. Make sure that option is chacked if there is that option.
Spotl;ight will have to index that shared drive otherwise it won't find a thing on it. It really does not search the drive. It searches its database index of the files on drives. If there is no database index for a drive it doesn't find squat.
You could try a program that I have been using called Easy Find. It really works.
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