Spotlight question
I have two Macs set up as a workstation and server.
I do all my design work on the workstation and then copy all the files back across to the server. This means that I have all my eggs in the one basket, but it's a basket that gets backed up daily.
Both machine are running 10.4, and they are connected directly to each other via Ethernet.
Both have spotlight up and running, but how come when I'm using the workstation I can't search the contents of the server via Spotlight?
Even if I Apple-F in the Finder, and tell it to look in a particular folder it still can't find what I know to be there.
Is there something I'm missing?
I do all my design work on the workstation and then copy all the files back across to the server. This means that I have all my eggs in the one basket, but it's a basket that gets backed up daily.
Both machine are running 10.4, and they are connected directly to each other via Ethernet.
Both have spotlight up and running, but how come when I'm using the workstation I can't search the contents of the server via Spotlight?
Even if I Apple-F in the Finder, and tell it to look in a particular folder it still can't find what I know to be there.
Is there something I'm missing?
Comments
Originally posted by Messiah
I have two Macs set up as a workstation and server.
I do all my design work on the workstation and then copy all the files back across to the server. This means that I have all my eggs in the one basket, but it's a basket that gets backed up daily.
Both machine are running 10.4, and they are connected directly to each other via Ethernet.
Both have spotlight up and running, but how come when I'm using the workstation I can't search the contents of the server via Spotlight?
Even if I Apple-F in the Finder, and tell it to look in a particular folder it still can't find what I know to be there.
Is there something I'm missing?
When you use "Apple-F" to search the server from the workstation, are trying to search the contents of files? (i.e. are you doing a search: "find files whose content includes...").
I think that spotlight isn't working as you expect because of where the indexes are kept:
If you run 10.4 on a machine, and you haven't disabled spotlight, the first time you boot the machine, spotlight will build an "index" of all the files on that computer. Once it's built the index the first time (which can take a loooooong time), it keeps the index dynamically updated. When you do a spotlight search, it searches the index, which is built in a special way so that it can be searched super-fast.
The problem you've got is that your server has a spotlight index of its files stored on its HDD, and the workstation has an index of its files stored on its HDD. So, when you try to search the server with the workstation using the workstation's spotlight, it doesn't have an index of the server's files and therefore cannot perform the search. I don't have 10.4 so cannot check this, but I believe there should be a way to make the workstation index the server's files.
Try searching MacOSXhints for spotlight. (you'll get a lot of hits, but I'm sure you'll learn a few interesting/helpful things).
Hope all that helps.
It is working as a file server, not a data server. As such, it will not use an index.
Bummer.
Way overkill for most folks though.