netatalk  4.4.0
Free and Open Source Apple Filing Protocol (AFP) Server
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Indexing for Spotlight Search

Starting with version 3.1 Netatalk supports Spotlight searching. Netatalk uses GNOME TinySPARQL/LocalSearch (previously known as Tracker) as metadata store, indexer and search engine.

Limitations and notes

  • Large filesystems

    Tracker on Linux uses the inotify Kernel filesystem change event API for tracking filesystem changes. On large filesystems this may be problematic since the inotify API doesn't offer recursive directory watches but instead requires that for every subdirectory watches must be added individually.

    On Solaris the FEN file event notification system is used. It is unknown which limitations and resource consumption this Solaris subsystem may have.

    We therefore recommend to disable live filesystem monitoring and let Tracker periodically scan filesystems for changes instead, see the Tracker configuration options enable-monitors and crawling-interval below.

  • Indexing home directories

    A known limitation with the current implementation means that shared volumes in a user's home directory does not get indexed by Spotlight.

    As a workaround, keep the shared volumes you want to have indexed elsewhere on the host filesystem.

Supported metadata attributes

The following table lists the supported Spotlight metadata attributes, based on Apple's MDItem object Core Services file metadata standard.

Description Spotlight Key
Name kMDItemDisplayName, kMDItemFSName
Document content (full text search) kMDItemTextContent
File type _kMDItemGroupId, kMDItemContentTypeTree
File modification date kMDItemFSContentChangeDate, kMDItemContentModificationDate, kMDItemAttributeChangeDate
Content Creation date kMDItemContentCreationDate
The author, or authors, of the contents of the file kMDItemAuthors, kMDItemCreator
The name of the country where the item was created kMDItemCountry
Duration kMDItemDurationSeconds
Number of pages kMDItemNumberOfPages
Document title kMDItemTitle
The width, in pixels, of the contents. For example, the image width or the video frame width kMDItemPixelWidth
The height, in pixels, of the contents. For example, the image height or the video frame height kMDItemPixelHeight
The color space model used by the document contents kMDItemColorSpace
The number of bits per sample kMDItemBitsPerSample
Focal length of the lens, in millimeters kMDItemFocalLength
ISO speed kMDItemISOSpeed
Orientation of the document. Possible values are 0 (landscape) and 1 (portrait) kMDItemOrientation
Resolution width, in DPI kMDItemResolutionWidthDPI
Resolution height, in DPI kMDItemResolutionHeightDPI
Exposure time, in seconds kMDItemExposureTimeSeconds
The composer of the music contained in the audio file kMDItemComposer
The musical genre of the song or composition kMDItemMusicalGenre