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Set Spotlight search levels on Xsan

Use these steps to change how Spotlight searches work with your Xsan.

Xsan supports two levels of Spotlight searches:

  • ReadWrite — Searches use a full index of file system attributes and metadata from file contents. The index is updated as file system content changes. This is the default search level when you turn on Spotlight on Xsan volumes in Xsan 2.2 and later.

  • FsSearch — FsSearch turns on searches against file system attributes, but not indexed content search. This option requires metadata controllers with OS X v10.6 or later and Xsan 2.2 or later.

OS X Yosemite and later

To change how Spotlight searches work with your Xsan volume in OS X Yosemite and later, follow these steps. In all of the commands, replace VolumeName with the name of your Xsan volume.

1. In the volume configuration on your primary MDC, set "FsSearch" as the spotlightSearchLevel key's value:

sudo /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c 'set :config:globals:spotlightSearchLevel FsSearch' /Library/Preferences/Xsan/VolumeName.cfgp

2. Update the Xsan configuration that's stored in LDAP:

sudo xsanctl pushConfigUpdate

3. Restart the Xsan volume.

sudo cvadmin -e 'stop VolumeName'

sudo cvadmin -e 'start VolumeName'

OS X Mavericks and earlier

To change how Spotlight searches work with your Xsan volume in OS X Mavericks and earlier, follow these steps. In all of the commands, replace VolumeName with the name of your Xsan volume.

1. Find the Xsan volume's configuration file on the metadata controllers:

/Library/Preferences/Xsan/VolumeName.cfg

2. Edit the volume configuration file so that the global section contains these two lines:

EnableSpotlight Yes SpotlightSearchLevel FsSearch

3. Repeat the configuration file changes on all other metadata controllers that control the volume.

4. Restart the volume.

If you want, you can revert to ReadWrite, the default indexed search level. To revert to ReadWrite, repeat these steps but use "ReadWrite" for the SpotlightSearchLevel entry. If there's a large amount of data on the volume, it might take several hours to build the index.

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