Spotlight reports “Indexing and searching disabled” in Lion
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Modified 1 year, 2 months ago
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Lion keeps “losing track” of Spotlight information. Directories and Applications disappear, full text searches stop working, etc. I seem to need to re-index it once a week or so.
However, now it appears to not work at all.
Running
sudo mdutil -i on /
from the Terminal I get a message
“Indexing and searching disabled.”
I have tried trashing preference files, deleting the whole V100 folder, repairing permssions, etc but Spotlight still thinks indexing is turned off on my entire Volume (Yes have added/deleted whole disk from Spotlight’s privacy preferences”).
In the console I have quite a few errors that look like this
mds: (Error) Server: Disabled store registered for scope “/Applications”
However, I do not know how to tell it to re-enable that scope as mdutil gives an error when I try to turn on indexing and gives an error when I try to delete the index
EDIT: I reinstalled Lion. It did not fix the problem(s) 🙁
macos
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edited Jun 9, 2012 at 22:11
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Cajunluke
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asked Sep 7, 2011 at 17:30
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lemonginger
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Are you using some “cleanup” tool by chance? Some of them are overly aggressive and delete the spotlight index. –
Ingmar Hupp
Sep 7, 2011 at 17:38
nope, no cleanup tools. –
lemonginger
Sep 7, 2011 at 17:41
You could try flushing your cache and rebuilt it with the following command: sudo mdutil -pEsav. The command you are running just turns it on, but it may be chocking for a different reason. How much space do you have free on the drive (how much taken)? And what are the errors you receive from mdutil? – user10355
Sep 7, 2011 at 20:35
I second running sudo mdutil -pEsav. My timemachien drive was constantly being indexed. After running that and waiting for spotlight to finish the rebuild I had no more problems. –
cftarnas
Sep 7, 2011 at 20:41
As mentioned, that doesn’t work because Spotlight thinks it is disabled. Running the above command gets me: Indexing and searching disabled. Error: datastore publishing not implemented. –
lemonginger
Sep 7, 2011 at 21:27
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10 Answers
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I had the exact same problem, with all solutions above failing identically. Then I reexamined the directory listing for / and found a hidden file .metadata_never_index in the root directory. I removed this file and was able to turn spotlight on again with mdutil -i on /.
mds is now reindexing the hard disk, all looks good for now.
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edited Jun 9, 2012 at 22:11
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Cajunluke
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answered Dec 30, 2011 at 18:31
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harryn
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I had this same problem after imaging. This solution worked for me :)! More than a year later. –
Ethabelle
Aug 23, 2012 at 17:35
THANK YOU! Been trying to get this to work for a couple months on work laptop. I did sudo rm .metadata_never_index, then ran your mdutil -i on / and it said “Indexing enabled.” Now I finally get the indexing graph! –
neoscribe
Feb 7, 2015 at 0:52
This fixed it for me as well, however the issue comes up again after I rebooted. The .metadata_never_index file reappeared in /. However, it’s possible that the reason is I simply ran the command sudo mdutil -a -i on (without specifying “ at the end). –
mrk2010
Mar 7, 2017 at 18:07
1
This solution worked for me on a fresh install of macOS Sierra 10.12.6, December 2017 –
lacy
Dec 4, 2017 at 19:43
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sudo mdutil -i off /
sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight*
sudo mdutil -i on /
sudo mdutil -E /
1 – turn indexing off
2 – delete Spotlight folder
3 – turn indexing on
4 – rebuild
Does this help?
Also it seems you could use these commands:
sudo mdutil -a -i off
sudo mdutil -a -i on
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edited Oct 27, 2011 at 7:06
answered Sep 7, 2011 at 21:05
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maggix
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No, when I try that on any Volume or subset of a Volume I get the following, as mentioned Indexing and searching disabled. –
lemonginger
Sep 7, 2011 at 21:28
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I know it has something to do with the MDS error messages in the log (mds: (Error) Server: Disabled store registered for scope XXXX) but I don’t know why/how those are disabled –
lemonginger
Sep 7, 2011 at 21:29
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@lemonginger: Step 2,rm -rf /.Spotlight*, fails with “permission denied”. I’m stuck. –
orome
Oct 27, 2011 at 2:34
Try with sudo rm , I edited my above post –
maggix
Oct 27, 2011 at 7:07
@maggix: I’d tried that too (good suggestion), but it also fails. –
orome
Oct 27, 2011 at 21:13
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The other solutions didn’t work for me, however the following was the culprit in my case.
Make sure your root/main hard drive isn’t in the “privacy” settings for spotlight. For some reason I had the whole hard drive under the “Prevent spotlight from indexing the following locations” list.
You can access this section from System Preferences -> Spotlight -> Privacy
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answered Nov 18, 2013 at 12:29
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djhworld
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This was the key for me. The volume I wanted to index was in the Privacy window. Clicking minus (-) removed it. Then I could apply the steps outlined by maggix. I had to ‘enable’ twice, once for searching, and then for indexing. Same command both times: sudo mdutil -i on / –
Dickster
Nov 20, 2017 at 19:37
WARNING: I have a two-system hard-disk divided into two Volumes. When I add the volume I’m NOT using to the Spotlight -> Privacy panel, I discover it appears in the OTHER Volume’s Privacy panel as well. So when I restart onto the OTHER Volume, it’s in its own Privacy panel?!! NOT what I expected, especially since each Volume has its own .Spotlight-V100 directory. Is this an Apple bug? –
Dickster
Nov 20, 2017 at 20:36
This solved the issue for me! 🙂 Thanks! 🙂 –
Muhammad bin Yusrat
Apr 16, 2020 at 6:41
The unique solution that works for me! Thank you so much!! –
PRVS
Dec 5, 2020 at 10:12
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sudo mdutil -i off /
sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight*
sudo rm -rf /.metadata_never_index
sudo mdutil -i on /
sudo mdutil -E /
A combination of the above worked for me. Step 3 was the big one. Got rid of the “Indexing and searching disabled.” message. Then steps 4 and 5 worked as expected.
turn indexing off
delete Spotlight folder
delete metadata file
turn indexing on
rebuild
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edited Nov 19, 2014 at 17:44
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jherran
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answered Nov 19, 2014 at 17:13
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kmagill
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this worked for me. –
dirkk0
Jun 28, 2017 at 21:24
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After all of the initial troubleshooting steps:
Rebuild the index
Attempt in another user account
Dump prefs/cache and start over
I found the issue lied in what was enabled/disabled. In terminal, I ran “mdutil -sa” and got:
/:
Indexing enabled.
/Groups:
Indexing disabled.
/Shared Items/Public:
Indexing disabled.
/Users:
Indexing disabled.
/Users/sarah/Documents:
Indexing enabled.
I noticed “/Users: Indexing disabled.” That’s the problem there. The fix: “sudo mdutil -i on /Users”. After that, it re-indexed /Users, which took significantly longer than it had before, and before it was finished, it was searching my Mail!
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answered Apr 16, 2012 at 20:54
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Jay
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This can also be caused by getting stuck in safe mode. To fix that, you need to reset the NVRAM by holding down the Command ⌘, Option ⌥, P, and R keys immediately after rebooting (before the gray screen appears).
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edited Jun 10, 2012 at 3:16
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daviesgeek
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answered Jun 9, 2012 at 14:10
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webdefender
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I noticed this issue after my iMac installed the software update 10.7.4 to my machine. Most of the suggested command-lines would produce ‘Indexing and searching disabled’. sudo mdutil -pEsav gave me ‘datastore publishing not implemented.’
Below is the solution that worked:
edit /etc/hostconfig
add the line
SPOTLIGHT=-YES- at the bottom (this line was missing)
reboot
(after reboot make some soup while your machine prepares the index)
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answered Aug 13, 2012 at 22:14
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danfelabs
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Only the combination of -E and -i on worked for me:
sudo mdutil -E -i on /Volumes/blah
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answered Mar 14, 2018 at 11:08
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julifos
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This worked for me: Re-enable Spotlight Indexing
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
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edited Aug 17, 2017 at 9:12
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grg♦
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answered Aug 17, 2017 at 8:10
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Jeremy
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While this link may answer the question, it is better to include the essential parts of the answer here and provide the link for reference. Link-only answers can become invalid if the linked page changes. –
grg
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Aug 17, 2017 at 9:13
Fixed my problem. Thanks –
user20072008
Jul 29, 2020 at 5:24
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I’ve tried for days about every solution out there for Big Sur, and the combination of these steps seemed to solve it for me. Trust me I didn’t want do disable system integrity either but it’s the only thing that worked:
Disable system integrity (restart -> hold cmd + r -> select utilities terminal -> csrutil disable -> restart again)
run
sudo rm /System/Volumes/Data/.metadata_never_index
run
sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
run
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
Reenable system integrity csrutil enable following steps in step #1
Specifically the problem I had was I could not search applications. As you can see in the image, I can now see the application and it will successfully open it. Also, notice the index loading indicator:
enter image description here
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