Spotlight: "Privacy List Error: ... couldn't be added ... unknown error"

G'day all. I'm having a spotlight problem and I'd be very grateful for any help.
In short:
Spotlight refuses to index one of my partitions, and both the Privacy "trick" in System Preferences to force a re-index, plus using mdutil in the terminal, both produce unknown errors.
If anyone has any ideas, please help!
More information if you're interested:
I have my hard drive partitioned into two, one for the OS the other for my home folder. I've used the advanced settings in the System Preferences > Accounts to tell my user account to find my home folder on the second partition.
Spotlight refuses to work with the home folder volume.
When I try to go into System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy and add the offending volume to that, I get a message saying "Privacy List Error: The item couldn't be added or removed because of an unknown error."
If in Terminal I try the following:
mdutil -sv /Volumes/David/
I get back:
/volumes/David:
Indexing disabled.
I try:
mdutil -v -i on /Volumes/David/
I get back:
/volumes/David:
Error: unable to perform operation. (-1)
Indexing disabled.
I've tried the above statements both logged in as root as well as logged in as me.
I've also tried Spotless and get an equally unhelpful "unknown error".
Usually when updating my system I just do an upgrade install, and admittedly this has left a lot of legacy stuff lying around over the years, and various problems have been building recently, including this one, so a few weeks ago I bit the bullet and gave my system a full clean out:
I swapped my existing hard drive for a new one, formatted the new one, set up the partitions afresh, did a clean install (from the 10.5.4 discs that came with my MacBook Pro), then software updated everything (up to 10.5.6), and then clean reinstalled most of my applications, and manually dragged all my personal stuff back in from the original hard drive (which now is sitting in an external case as a backup in case I realise I've forgotten to transfer something, down the track).
All my other problems have gone away and my system is snappier than it's been in a long time, which is great (and not unexpected!), but this spotlight problem persists. I'm usually pretty clued up with Mac stuff and am generally comfortable in the Terminal but this one's got me stumped. If anyone can help me figure out what is causing this error, I'd be most grateful.
Thanks!

Thanks V.K. for the suggestions. I've just tried all that, but unfortunately it has not changed the situation.
System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy, and mdutil both still give the same results as before.
A bunch more info in case it's relevant/helpful:
1. The volume in question IS my home folder. ie. the path to my home folder as defined in the Advanced Settings part of System Preferences > Accounts is "/Volumes/David/" (and yes the volume name is "David" with a capital "D"). I mention all that so I can ask is there any problem with having my home folder = a volume? I can't see any reason why this shouldn't work, and for what it's worth this spotlight problem is only recent whereas I've been using this set up ever since I got Leopard on the day it originally came out (and spotlight had been working fine for months until recently).
2. I wonder if there's something else on that volume that's causing problems, or some permissions issue? If it might be any use in diagnosing this issue, here's some ls's:
%ls-al /Volumes/
drwxrwxrwt@ 6 root admin 204 8 Mar 04:15 .
drwxrwxr-t 34 root admin 1224 7 Mar 22:43 ..
-rw-rw-rw-@ 1 david admin 6148 3 Mar 17:45 .DS_Store
drwxrwxr-x 35 root admin 1258 8 Mar 04:15 David
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 1 8 Mar 04:15 MBP15 -> /
...and...
%ls -al /Volumes/David/
drwxrwxr-x 35 root admin 1258 8 Mar 04:15 .
drwxrwxrwt@ 6 root admin 204 8 Mar 04:15 ..
-rw------- 1 david admin 3 4 Feb 23:48 .CFUserTextEncoding
-rw-r--r--@ 1 david admin 15364 7 Mar 23:08 .DS_Store
drwxrwxrwt@ 3 david admin 102 5 Feb 19:57 .TemporaryItems
drwx------ 2 david admin 68 8 Mar 04:15 .Trash
d-wx-wx-wt@ 2 root _unknown 68 8 Mar 04:17 .Trashes
-rw------- 1 david admin 66 3 Mar 17:12 .bash_history
drwxr-xr-x 6 david admin 204 3 Mar 17:15 .bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 root admin 0 4 Feb 23:52 .com.apple.timemachine.supported
drwx------ 3 david admin 102 5 Feb 12:59 .cups
drwx------ 5 root _unknown 170 7 Mar 20:02 .fseventsd
-rw------- 1 david admin 2871 8 Mar 04:13 .history
-rw------- 1 david admin 35 7 Mar 23:31 .lesshst
-rwxr-----@ 1 david admin 177 23 Feb 01:39 .login
-rwxr-----@ 1 david admin 181 23 Feb 01:39 .profile
drwx------ 3 david admin 102 6 Feb 09:35 .ssh
-rwx---r-x@ 1 david staff 2578 3 Mar 17:52 .tcshrc
drwxr-xr-x 12 david admin 408 7 Mar 16:23 Applications
drwx------+ 16 david admin 544 7 Mar 16:26 Desktop
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 5632 28 Feb 03:12 Desktop DB
-rw-r--r--@ 1 root admin 2 24 Feb 14:58 Desktop DF
drwx------+ 11 david admin 374 5 Mar 05:12 Documents
drwx------+ 30 david admin 1020 8 Mar 04:06 Downloads
drwxr-xr-x+ 51 david admin 1734 7 Mar 00:27 Library
-rw-rw-r-- 1 david admin 21987676160 23 Feb 21:53 MBP15 20090223.sparseimage
drwx------+ 7 david admin 238 5 Feb 22:00 Movies
drwx------+ 5 david admin 170 5 Feb 00:06 Music
drwx---r-x@ 44 david admin 1496 1 Mar 01:51 MyStuff
drwx------+ 17 david admin 578 17 Feb 19:22 Pictures
drwxr-xr-x+ 5 david admin 170 4 Feb 23:20 Public
drwxr-xr-x+ 5 david admin 170 4 Feb 23:20 Sites
drwxr-xr-x 12 david admin 408 3 Mar 17:15 •David
3. here's an interesting entry from the console at the point where I tried to add the volume to System Preference > Spotlight > Privacy:
mds[32] nosymlink_mkdir() unable to realpath or parent paths do not match p:/Volumes/David/.Spotlight-V100: r:/volumes/David:
4. I notice that when I do that (add the volume) it gives the error message I originally explained ("couldn't be added or removed because of an unknown error"), and adds the above line to the console, but otherwise it appears that nothing has changed (ie. it doesn't show in the list).
If I then quit system preferences, reopen it, and go back into that Privacy tab the volume IS there in the list. If I then try to remove it, I get the same error message and console message, and again nothing appears to happen, but then if I quit system preferences again and then go back into it, the volume is no longer in the list.
There is definitely something weird going on here.
Any other thoughts?
Thanks again!
David.

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