Spotlight is really a simple tool. Spotlight consists of mds, a command that is the metadata server, mdworker, the pawn that mds sends to scan objects and index them and then the three command lines of mdutil (manage the indexes), mdls (list metadata of an object) and mdfind, which as the name implies, finds things. All of this is used to keep a database called .store.db nested under .Spotlight-V100 at the root of each volume that’s been indexed. To reindex Spotlight from the command line, we’ll use mdutil. From a command prompt, enter the following to index your boot volume. sudo mdutil -E / Or an external drive named krypted:…
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SMB, Extended Attributes & Xsan
Xsan 2.2 is having a bit of a problem with serving up files with Extended Attributes over SMB volumes that are stored on an Xsan according to a recent knowledge base article. The fix (other than not using files with Extended Attributes on Xsan volumes that are shared up over SMB is to enable stream support in the /etc/smb.conf file. To do so, open /etc/smb.conf and then change the stream support = yes setting to stream support = no. This isn’t to say that all of your problems will magically vanish, but it should help to provide some relief until the next update.
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dotclean and Extended Attributes on Xsan
If you’ve been upgrading Xsan from version to version without doing a nuke + pave of your volume then you might still not be using extended attributes. Instead you might still be using ._ files, or AppleDouble files. Apple has a script included with Xsan, dotclean, which will go ahead and perform the conversion, although it does take awhile to run according to how many files you have. In order to kick it off, first unmount the volume for all except the controller that will do the conversion. Next, simply open Xsan Admin, click on Volumes and then the volume you wish to enable it for. From here, click on the…