Spotlight's indexing is constantly failing

Hi,
recently (after the upgrade to 10.4.9) I noticed that there are a lot of messages in console.log like:

Sorry, pressed the wrong button I wanted to cancel the post because the error is not showing up anymore.

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Spotlight mysteriously re-indexes after some failed searches?

Well here's an odd one:
About a week ago I had occasion to migrate a "standard" account from one Leopard computer to a fresh Leopard computer where it became the second account on the new machine (after the Admin account). This was done with Migration Assistant and completed without problems.
The original account was inherited from a Tiger 10.4.10 installation on the old machine via a default, "upgrade", install of Leopard.
Spotlight searches of the Home directory of that account worked just fine on the old machine. There is nothing in the Spotlight preferences Privacy list in either the old machine or the new machine. It may be relevant that the old machine was the Powerbook listed in my tag line below. The new machine is a Macbook. I've had no other Spotlight problems on either machine.
Today I had occasion to search for a folder in the Home directory of this account on the new machine. To my surprise, it did not show in the results. OTHER stuff showed up, but not this folder.
So I opened a Finder window and did a Command-f to bring up the search criteria and started playing around with search criteria (specifying "kind" = "folder" for example) to see if I could isolate the problem. Periodically I also retried searching in the regular Spotlight drop down to compare results. The upshot was that it seemed NOTHING in the Home directory of this migrated account had been indexed.
And then, for no obvious reason, and about 5-10 minutes into poking around like this, I discovered Spotlight was "indexing". It had about 20 minutes of indexing to do.
Again, I had not been doing anything in the Spotlight preferences -- just trying different search criteria in the Finder window. So why index now?
When it finished indexing, searches for files or content in the Home directory of this account, either via the Finder window or the Spotlight drop down, all worked fine.
NOW, why should Spotlight decide just at this moment to index this account? The account has been in heavy use on this machine for about week (although I had not had occasion to do searches in it).
And the indexing didn't start until about 5-10 minutes into the search and re-search process trying to explore the limits of Spotlight's "blind spot".
Does Spotlight fail to realize it needs to index a migrated account?
Does Spotlight have some sort of fail safe mechanism where it revisits the need to index things after so many repeated searches or searches with no results?
Mysterious indeed.
--Bob

Review the hits from a google search for socket(PF_ROUTE). IMO, something's blocking access, most likely mucked up permissions on the server; however, I don't muck with servers or AD and you might be better off perusing MS's forums for AD info.

Spotlight random indexing?

Yesterday I was erasing an external 40 gb hard drive through disk utility and the program seemed to have froze since it never updated the time remaining (53 minutes). That drive may have some bad sectors. So I just forced my computer to shutdown and unplugged my hard drive (via usb). Today morning when I started the computer, Spotlight was indexing my computer. Did i mess something up because I pulled the hard drive out? Or is this due to me copying 4 gb worth of files from the drive before erasing it? Ive heard that this done if a drive is failing, is that true?

Hard to tell, but in Spotlight's Pref Pane>Privacy tab, add all your drives to that to stop Spotlight from doing it's thing until you get it figured out.
Try Erasing the drive again with the Security option of Zero Data once.

Spotlight always indexes mac on startup

I've read several reports on Spotlight rebuilding indexes on startup. I found this issue on both my macs (with TIme Machine either on or off).
Here's what I've done trying to solve the problem:
1) I removed all of the spotlight indexes from all the disks and forced a re-index;
2) Removed all the *.mdimporter files from /Library/Spotlight
3) Erased all the system and application's caches with Onyx.
Are there any other solutions?

I don't mean to presume that all your guys' issues are related to this, but I am having this problem as well, and am quite sure it's due to a faulty logic board, and/or the inability of the machine to properly access RAM and other key components. My MBP 2.16, 1 GB constantly makes helicopter sounds that are emitted from the right speaker area. Apple replaced the first logic board in this machine while it was under warranty, and apparently put another defective one in. Overall, Apple hasn't been to helpful since.

Spotlight re-indexes with each startup

Each time I startup my PowerBook, Spotlight spends a good 15-20 mins indexing. It does eventually stop and is then fully functional, but I wonder if anyone has experienced something similar and found a fix.

I wish I was posting a solution rather than a "me too." I believe this happened after I went from 10.4.3 to 10.4.4, but my memory could be failing me. Either way, I also experience Spotlight re-indexing at each startup. It is somewhat annoying, but not overly so. Any help or insight would be appreciated.
I did update to 10.4.5, and it still re-indexes at startup.

Spotlight not indexing after hard drive replaced

Hi all
Just wondering if anyone knows how to encourage Spotlight to re-index? Just had my hard drive replaced as part of the recall, and now Spotlight wont index anything.
I've tried previous suggestions (adding and removing hard drive to privacy list, commands through terminal etc), but it's still not working. All the software is up to date (10.7.5).
Any ideas? It's incredibly annoying, and making working on this computer virtually impossible at the moment.
Cheers

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Step 1
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left.
Enter "mdworker" (without the quotes) in the Filter text field. Post the most recent 50 or so messages that appear in the Console window — the text, please, not a screenshot.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into a message.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — edit that out, too, but don’t remove the context.
Step 2
Do the same with the search string "mds".

Force Spotlight to Index a FW HDD

Hello!
Well, I recently aquired (as in 2 days ago) a Seagate 400GB FireWire/USB drive. I have it connected via FW.
Well, after formatting it to Mac Extended format, I partitioned it for a 60G section (intended for a secondary boot volume) and a 320 GB volume.
Yesterday, I coppied all 6 gig of data from our old G4's hard drive. Tonight, I want to look for a couple of files - but spotlight hasn't indexed anything - so not even find will find the files.
How do you force spotlight to index a hard drive?
-Dan

To force a volume to index just drag it into the privacy window for a moment and then drag it out.
-mj
[email protected]

Spotlight still indexing after upgrading to 10.6.7

I upgraded my 3-1/2 year old black MacBook to OS X 10.6.7 the other day, and after I rebooted, Spotlight began indexing my drive and has been stuck at "Estimating index time" ever since.
Is this a known issue, or am I the only one?
I'm not sure why it started indexing again, but how can I get it to stop?

Hi,
Try to stop NAT, than start Setup Gateway Assistant again, may be help.
Note: you should be sure your firewall is in correct setup. My NAT some time stop and can not start again because of my firewall "open" much ports than nessesary.

How can I stop Spotlight from indexing external drives?

I work in an environment where we plugin several different costumer harddrives all day long as part of our working process. Often only to extract one file from a given drive. Therefore its annoying that Spotlight automatically starts indexing these drives, because it slows down everthing, but also because our windows costumers suddenly see these weird mac files on their drives, that are invisible to the macuser. The Privacy setting is not of much use, as its impossible to add oru costumers drives to the list - we simply don't know the drive until we see it.
How can spotlight stop indexing?

The Privacy option is okay for private users, but at work we receive alot of harddrives from costumers and we simply cannot spend the extra time waiting for a drive to be indexed every time it is connected. That drive may never be connected again as it belongs to a costumer, and it is impossible for us to add drives to the Privacy pane, because we do not know they exist before we see them infront of us. The ption to disable all external drives from being indexed would be great. Or that the indexing can be stopped in the spotlight menu, or that the indexing will not start until 10 minutes after the drive has been mounted - and only if the drive is inactive.

Stop Spotlight from indexing new drives

I know how to block a drive in Spotlight's privacy settings.
What I'm looking for is a way to stop Spotlight from indexing a drive every time I plug one in. I'm often connecting external drives for work & spotlight immediatley starts to index & I go in and add it to the blocked list in Spotlight> Privacy.
Is there a way to just have Spotlight NOT try to index a new drive?

Sorry, I missed that part.
Try this, add this file to the external drive.
touch /Volumes/name of the external drive/.metadata_never_index
This will add a file called .metadata_never_index to the root of that drive.
You can also disable spotlight
sudo mdutil -a -i off
To re-enable Spotlight:
sudo mdutil -a -i on

How to stop Spotlight from indexing backup drives

Is there any way to stop Spotlight from indexing backup drives?
Thanks

Yes, in Spotlight preferences there is an option to do this. I'm not on my Mac now, so I forget exactly where in Spotlight preferences it is. I believe there is a second tab that you have to click on, then click the "+" sign to add items to Exclude. Just add your backup drive.

IPhoto/Spotlight not indexing SOLUTION

For those iPhoto 6 users whoose comments and keywords not being indexed by Spotlight, here is the solution to your problem!
If you are getting * Parsing file: '~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/AlbumData.xml'
ERROR: syntax error (<key>PhotoCount</key>) when you try to manually index your iPhoto library with mdimport, this will solve your problem!
You can only have single-line comments on your photos:
- Create a smart album: "Comments... contains... [option][return]"
Note: press option+return with your keyboard... the box will appear blank
- The smart album should become populated with photos where you entered a comment containing a character return
- Click the ( i ) in the bottom left-hand corner to draw up the info for each file, and manually remove the character break until your smart alum is empty OR go to Photos -> Batch Change and enter a new comment. Make sure that "append" is UNCHECKED -- This will overwrite all of the comments.
Now, you must also make sure you only have single-line comments on your rolls:
- From the iPhoto Library, go to View -> Sort Photos -> By Film Roll
- Hold the Apple (command) key, and click the drop down triangle once or twice (until all are collapsed)
- Manually examine each roll and make sure that the comments (if any) are all on one line.
Note: If the comments are all on one line, the whole line will be visible in the collapsed view under the Film Roll name
Quit iPhoto
Open Terminal (in the Utilities folder)
- Type mdimport -f ~/Pictures and hit return
- After some time, a message should come up saying:
* Parsing file: '~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/AlbumData.xml'
As long as there is not an error message underneath, this is good!
- When the command has finished running and you're at a blank prompt again, quit Terminal
Open iPhoto
- Click iPhoto in the menu bar, and go to Preferences
- Click the Keywords tab
- Click the "+" and create a new keyword called Spotlight
- Close out of iPhoto preferences
- From the iPhoto Library, select all of the photos (Edit -> Select All)
- Get info on the files (Photos -> Get Info)
- Select the Keywords tab
- CHECK the box that says [Spotlight] *THIS MIGHT TAKE A WHILE
- UNCHECK the box that says [Spotlight] * THIS MIGHT TAKE A WHILE
Note: This forces all of the pictures to be updated in the database
- Quit iPhoto
Search for your comments and keywords with Spotlight

Can I ask, does this need to be done every time you add photos to iPhoto, or is this a one-off trick to get Spotlight to look at iPhoto keywords in the first place?
My first experience with iPhoto is iPhoto6 so I don't have any baggage that I am bringing from earlier copies of iPhoto. I've imported in 1500 photos and am working my way through tagging them with keywords and am hoping that spotlight will index them. Is this bug related to keywords applied in older versions of iPhoto, or does the issue manifest itself even on a brand new library? Are Apple looking to patch iPhoto / Spotlight to resolve this?
Thanks.
Graham

IPhoto/Spotlight not indexing SOLUTION *edit

For those iPhoto 6 users whoose comments and keywords not being indexed by Spotlight, here is the solution to your problem!
If you are getting * Parsing file: '~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/AlbumData.xml'
ERROR: syntax error (<key>PhotoCount</key>) when you try to manually index your iPhoto library with mdimport, this will solve your problem!
You can only have single-line comments on your photos:
- Create a smart album: "Comments... contains... [option][return]"
Note: press option+return with your keyboard... the box will appear blank
- The smart album should become populated with photos where you entered a comment containing a character return
- Click the ( i ) in the bottom left-hand corner to draw up the info for each file, and manually remove the character break until your smart alum is empty OR go to Photos -> Batch Change and enter a new comment. Make sure that "append" is UNCHECKED -- This will overwrite all of the comments.
Now, you must also make sure you only have single-line comments on your rolls:
- From the iPhoto Library, go to View -> Sort Photos -> By Film Roll
- Hold the Apple (command) key, and click the drop down triangle once or twice (until all are collapsed)
- Manually examine each roll and make sure that the comments (if any) are all on one line.
Note: If the comments are all on one line, the whole line will be visible in the collapsed view under the Film Roll name
Quit iPhoto
Open Terminal (in the Utilities folder)
- Type mdimport -f ~/Pictures and hit return
- After some time, a message should come up saying:
* Parsing file: '~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/AlbumData.xml'
As long as there is not an error message underneath, this is good!
- When the command has finished running and you're at a blank prompt again, quit Terminal
Open iPhoto
- Click iPhoto in the menu bar, and go to Preferences
- Click the Keywords tab
- Click the "+" and create a new keyword called Spotlight
- Close out of iPhoto preferences
- From the iPhoto Library, select all of the photos (Edit -> Select All)
- Get info on the files (Photos -> Get Info)
- Select the Keywords tab
- CHECK the box that says [Spotlight] *THIS MIGHT TAKE A WHILE
- UNCHECK the box that says [Spotlight] * THIS MIGHT TAKE A WHILE
Note: This forces all of the pictures to be updated in the database
- Quit iPhoto
Search for your comments and keywords with Spotlight

Can I ask, does this need to be done every time you add photos to iPhoto, or is this a one-off trick to get Spotlight to look at iPhoto keywords in the first place?
My first experience with iPhoto is iPhoto6 so I don't have any baggage that I am bringing from earlier copies of iPhoto. I've imported in 1500 photos and am working my way through tagging them with keywords and am hoping that spotlight will index them. Is this bug related to keywords applied in older versions of iPhoto, or does the issue manifest itself even on a brand new library? Are Apple looking to patch iPhoto / Spotlight to resolve this?
Thanks.
Graham

Spotlight is indexing but what? And why does it want access to the web?

I can see Spotlight is indexing, it spends several hours a day doing this, every day.
Where can i find more details like previous OS X versions? Which drive, how much time left etc.
Console was no help, any suggestions welcome.
Also, with "Spotlight Suggestions" and "Bing Web Searches" disabled in the Spotlight Search Results references, why is the process "Spotlight Web Content" still trying to access the web several times a day? I am not using Spotlight when this happens nor am i trying to preview any files that have web content in them. Most commonly it tries to connect to static.amazon.com on the http port.

In System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results, if you have "Bookmarks and History" checked, then the "Spotlight Web Content" background process will crawl any web page that you recently visited to index its keywords. Uncheck that to turn it off.

Convincing spotlight to index other file types

I have a large number of LaTeX documents on my computer, but Spotlight seems unwilling to index them. How can I convince spotlight to go ahead and index/search files with a .tex extension just like it would any other ASCII text file?
Details: LaTeX source code is standard ASCII text, but the files have a ".tex" extension. These files never seem to show up in Spotlight searches, even if I search for terms that I'm certain are included. I'm guessing that Spotlight sees the extension, says "I don't know how to index files of this type" and moves on. How can I tell it to index (and then subsequently search) these files just like normal .txt files? (I'd probably like to do the same with other "source code" file extensions too...) Thanks!

I found that Spotlight would index thousands of my old LaTeX files if I dragged them to another location and then dragged them back again. Unfortunately, I found that just moving the folders they were in was not sufficient.
This move added the metadata "public.plain-text" to all the .tex files, even though, since OS X 10.4, cp amd mv is supposed to preserving metadata and forks (according the man pages of CpMac and MvMac).
I did this after I had modified TeXShop's Info.plist by adding the public.plain-text string to the UTTypeConformsTo key. This is described in the Link: [macosxhints: Add Quick Look support for certain file formats|http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071028184428583] and by Tristan Hubsch in the Link: [Apple Discussion Topic: How to Spotlight (and QuickView) Hidden and Programming Files?|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6880380]. I don't know if this is necessary for the change.

Spotlight's indexing is constantly failing

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