ruined my Spotlight indexes

[pen-helm]

Guys, I need help!

I was getting repeated crashes of suggestd, and the web suggested rebuilding Spotlight indexes with mdutil.

Now my Spotlight index is gone and I can't get it back :-(

I booted in recovery mode and said

$ sudo mdutil -E /
/:
2022-04-28 01:50:02.085 mdutil[683:10921] mdutil disabling Spotlight: / -> kMDConfigSearchLevelOff
Indexing and searching disabled.

Then I try to turn it on:

$ sudo mdutil -i on /
/:
Indexing and searching disabled.

No matter what I try in mdutil, it always says "Indexing and searching disabled."

I did it to all my connected drives.

I've been trying remedies from the web:
- They're not excluded from Spotlight in System Preferences.
- I've got permissions for the drives affected.
- I tried rebooting.
- I don't have a ".metadata_never_index" file in / to remove.
- sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100 didn't work.
- I tried restarting Spotlight:
$ launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist
$ launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

- This didn't help either:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SpotlightServer.plist ExternalVolumesIgnore -bool False

or this:
/Volumes/Alpha % sudo mdutil -X ./
Spotlight directory not found

I clicked on the Spotlight magnifying glass in the menu bar, and it didn't say it was indexing.

Can anyone help?

P.S. I'm back on Mojave.

 

[bogdanw]

rm -rf /Volumes/Alpha/.Spotlight-V100 from Terminal in Recovery

 

[pen-helm]

rm -rf /Volumes/Alpha/.Spotlight-V100 from Terminal in Recovery

Tried that, no luck.

 

[bogdanw]

Small chance to work, but give it a try

sudo mdutil -d -i off /Volumes/Alpha
sudo rm -rf /Volumes/Alpha/.Spotlight-V100
sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/Alpha; sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/Alpha

 

[pen-helm]

Had to use sudo mdutil -X to rm that directory.

Then I tried what you said and got "Indexing and searching disabled" again :-(

 

[Steve Wozniak]

Hopefully you found a solution by now but, if not, here's my experience (and fix!) to what appears to be the same vexatious problem.

Here's what I did:

1. Logged in as root (this might be optional). Here's how: Enable and Login as root on macos
2. Since Catalina, the root of the system drive is read only and the non-read-only files are moved into a separate partition "(myhd)-Data". You can access those files in System/Volumes/Data . Here's some info about that change: Unable to create folder at Root and Read-only System Volume in Catalina
3. After making sure to show hidden files in the Finder (Command + Shift + . (period)), I was able to locate the file ".metadata_never_index" in the System/Volumes/Data folder and deleted it.
4. I also went through the short "SOLUTION" section here just to be thorough though in the end, this wasn't my particular cause.
5. I rebooted and logged back in as root, went into terminal and entered (not sure about the order and can't be certain this was necessary - but couldn't hurt to do so did):
   a) mdutil -ai on
   b) mdutil -aE
6. I also went into System Preferences / Spotlight / Privacy and added and then removed the system drive. This may be optional too but it couldn't hurt so I did it).
7. BOOM - spotlight was back and doing a fresh re-index!!!