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Spotlight indexes at the file level, so a file containing a complicated data structure may need to be split into a set of files for Spotlight to index it in a useful way.

Can you use MacFUSE to achieve this more dynamically?

Will Spotlight index a MacFUSE volume?

Can MacFUSE handle the necessary per-file metadata?

Can a MacFUSE process notify Spotlight when attributes of a file change?

tgdavies
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  • you don't split "complicated" files up for Spotlight to index, you write a plugin so that Spotlight knows how to index that particular format file, there is no magic here. –  Feb 25 '10 at 16:24
  • By 'complicated data structure' I mean that a single file may contain multiple entities, which you want to be able to search for independently. Spotlight can only return a single search hit per physical file. – tgdavies Mar 11 '10 at 02:29
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    Somewhat related - MacFUSE project is obsolete now. It is not developed for several years already. One should use [Fuse4X](http://fuse4x.org) instead. – user576557 Jun 15 '11 at 14:50

3 Answers3

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I've been testing with this myself.

I found this on the MacFuse Wiki: (http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/wiki/OPTIONS) if you wish to use Spotlight on a MacFUSE volume, you'll need to use allow_other.

I've discovered that it also works with allow_root.

However, I had to enable indexing myself by using mdutil -i on /Volume (as codelogic already mentioned)

So, if it does not work, try allow_root or allow_other

More testing: Allow_root does not work. it can index once, but it doesn't seem to index newly created files in subfolders. When changing to allow_other, it seems spotlight CAN detect the new changes, and index the new files. ==> allow_other is a requirement

kclement
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You can use the mdutil command to enable indexing on external volumes. It should be applicable to MacFUSE volumes as well.

sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/SomeVolume
codelogic
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so a file containing a complicated data structure may need to be split into a set of files for Spotlight to index it in a useful way.

If you want to index a custom file, you need to write your own Spotlight indexer that understands this file type - XCode has a template for this.

Ana Betts
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