[X4U] Using Apple's Find (Command F)

[David Ledger]

From: Daly Jessup <jessup at san.rr.com>
>At 1:35 PM -0700 3/9/06, John Baltutis wrote:
>>Quick tutorial. All of Spotlight's arcane stuff is stored in the hidden,
>>root-level directory /.Spotlight V100. To view its contents, use the
>>Terminal.app command ls, preceeding it with sudo:
>>
>>sudo ls -al /.Spotlight-V100/   ---->
>>. . .
>>_rules.plist
>>store.db
>>
>>Use the cp command to back it up (so you can replace it if you screw it up),
>>copy it to your desktop, open it in TextEdit, add the new parts, save it, and
>>cp it back, replacing the original.
>
>Thank you so much. Coincidentally, I have been studying a basic Unix
>tutorial this afternoon so that was less confusing than it might have
>been  an hour ago!
>
>But I notice in the listing of /.Spotlight-V100/ that its size is
>zero. and when I try to view it (I used "cat" - was that wrong?) it
>says "No such file or directory".

If as root you do:
ls -al /.Spotlight-V100/
you are specifying an absolute filename - it starts with a '/'. A
cp _rules.plist <destination>
assumes the _rules.plist to be in the current directory. Easiest to do
sudo cp /.Spotlight-V100/_rules.plist .
to copy it to the current directory.

If the size of _rules.plist is zero I wouldn't expect Spotlight to 
work because it doesn't know what to include.
To see its contents, 'cat' is fine as long as you you have rights.
sudo cat /.Spotlight-V100/_rules.plist
should work.

>I appear not to have journaled my hard drive. Would that make this
>process not work? My guess is that the answer is "yes". So can you
>only change this .plist if your disk is set up to be journaled?

A journaled filesystem is a different thing. Before making a change 
that would make a filesystem corrupt if not completed, it writes its 
intentions in a journal. If the change doesn't complete and the 
filesystem need fixing, it can roll the part-change back.


-- 
David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
Chair of HPUX SysAdmin SIG of hpUG technical user group (www.hpug.org.uk)
david.ledger at ivdcs.co.uk
www.ivdcs.co.uk