ML Compiled Image but Spotlight doens't work

[ImAMacGuy]

Had a couple people complain about when they go to spotlight to find an app it doesn't display results. They got around it by doing some mdutil commands.

Has anybody else heard of this or tried it to see if they get similar results from their Casper 8.6 compiled images?

[pbenham]

Since upgrading to 8.6 I've seen an issue with Spotlight. After imaging a machine with Casper (not a complied image in my case) Spotlight does not function. If I look at the root of the imaged drive I see a hidden file called ".metadata_never_index" which I have to manually remove and restart the machine for the Spotlight indexing to restart. I'm almost sure that this file was not there before I upgraded to 8.6.
I tried creating a simple non booted image with no extra stuff and still saw this file after imaging a machine. I should call it in to my Casper rep, but it's a busy time of year so it's on the backburner right now.

[Cem]

Is this happeneing to all OS clients? Can you confirm the client OS please?

[jenski]

We've also run into this issue. I ended up creating a script to remove the .metadata_never_index file & put it in a policy that would restart the machine once the script ran. It seems to be working for now.

[pbenham]

I see this on 10.6.X and 10.7.x images (not sure about 10.8).
Our JSS runs on OS X 10.6.8

[Cem]

@jenski
can I have a look at your script if possible please?

[ImAMacGuy]

this is the manual method i have.

sudo mdutil -i off /
sudo mdutil -sv /
cd /
ls -la .m*
sudo rm .metadata_never_index 
sudo mdutil -i on /

[Cem]

@jwojda
do you need to reboot after this?

[wdfraser]

There is a bug in 8.6 imaging where /.metadata_never_index and /.fseventsd/no_log are created but not cleaned up, https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=4939.

[Cem]

@wdfraser
thanks!

[Cem]

https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/discussion.html?id=4939
I will save you guys the hassle for copy/paste :)