[X4U] "Searching" question under 10.4

[Lee Licata]

To John and the list,

Thank you John for your hint.

I took your advice but instead of using terminal, I logged in as the  
root, made all files visible, found the plist in question, opened it  
in property editor, noted that the "included" strings line was empty,  
and after making a duplicate of the original, added to the included  
strings the folders you listed below.

Quit root, restarted in admin mode, and waited HOURS for spotlight to  
re-index.

Then, tested. Found all the files I tested. Thank you for your tip!!!

Lee


Message: 7
Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 12:02:26 -0700
From: John Baltutis <baltwo at san.rr.com>
Subject: Re: [X4U] "Searching" question under 10.4
To: x4u at listserver.themacintoshguy.com

On 05/10/06, Lee Licata <lazilicata at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> I have been following this thread quite closely.
>
> So, I tried something.
>
> I went to my hard drive, System> Library> CFMSupport and picked the
> file "CarbonLib" as an guinea pig.
>
> I then went to Spotlight to search that file.
>
> Nope, Nada, never found.
>
> Then, using the Find command, did the same.
>
> Same results.
>
> Then, as suggested by a previous poster, reconfigured a specific Find
> routine where I manually entered both the System folder and the
> Library folder as specific places to search.
>
> Re-performed the search.
>
> Nope, Nada, etc. etc.
>
> So, am I doing something wrong? Is there another way to search? Or,
> did Apple just make searching/finding such files not possible?
>

The following is based on a hint by Tim Wilson-Brown. As always, use  
it at your
own risk.

To force Spotlight to search in excluded places, you need to modify the
_rules.plist file stored in the hidden .Spotlight-V100 directory.

Do this while logged into an admin user account:

Launch the Terminal app.
Enter this command, substituting your user shortname for <username>  
(without
the brackets), hit the return key, enter your password (type it in  
carefully
because it won't show up on the screen), and hit the return key:

sudo cp /.Spotlight-V100/_rules.plist /Users/<username>/Desktop/ 
_rules.plist

This copies the _rules.plist file to your desktop. Now, select it, CMD 
+D tomake
a backup copy, CMD+I, and change its owernship from system, with no  
access for
you, to ownership to you by clicking on the lock, entering your  
password, and
selecting your user shortname. That should give you Read & Write  
access. Drop
the file onto TextEdit and add whichever directories you wantto  
search to the
INCLUDE list. You can see what yours currently looks like with this  
command:

sudo cat /.Spotlight-V100/_rules.plist

My modified _rules.plist file looks like this, which allows me to  
search the
developer docs and a whole lot more:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
         <key>EXCLUDE</key>
         <array/>
         <key>INCLUDE</key>
         <array>
                 <string>/System</string>
                 <string>/Library</string>
                 <string>/Developer/ADC Reference Library</string>
                 <string>/etc</string>
                 <string>/private</string>
                 <string>/usr</string>
                 <string>/bin</string>
                 <string>/sbin</string>
         </array>
         <key>NOTE</key>
         <string>Specify paths to include or exclude, preceeding  
rules which
target user-homes with ~/</string>
</dict>
</plist>

After changing the _rules.plist file to suit your needs, save it,  
select it,
CMD+I, and change the ownership back to system, and click on the lock.

Enter this command and replace the original file with the one you  
modified:

sudo cp /Users/<username>/Desktop/_rules.plist  /.Spotlight-V100/ 
_rules.plist

Restart and note that Spotlight will start reindexing. When it  
finishes, you
should be able to search for anything located in the now included  
directories.