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

[John Baltutis]

On 09/02/06,  Daly Jessup <jessup at san.rr.com> wrote:
> At 3:58 PM -0700 9/2/06, John Baltutis wrote:
>>On 09/02/06, Robert Ameeti <robert at ameeti.net> wrote:
>>>  At 5:42 PM -0700, 9/1/06, Daly Jessup wrote:
>>>
>>>>Also, I have a confusion here, because I thought a big problem with
>>>>Spotlight was that it deliberately omits quite a few folders from
>>>>its searches, so it would not search the entire hard drive. Has that
>>>>changed?
>>>
>>>  I don't think so. I do believe that Apple is still omitting the System
>>>  directory from its searches until the user alters the defaults through a
>>>hack.
>>
>>No hack needed. Users are able to modify plist files. Just modify the
>>/.Spotlight-V100/_rules.plist file which controls what's excluded and included
>>in Spotlight searches. This ain't rocket science. This is what mine looks
>>like:
>
> John, where and how do you find that .plist file?

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/   ---->
.journalHistoryLog
.store.db
ContentIndex.db
Store-V1 (which contains a ton of indexes)
_IndexPolicy.plist
_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.