Hi;
I’m using SMB shares in a production OSX environment; works great.
I am having problems getting the SMB shares to index on the mac clients so they can be searched. Does anyone know how to do this?
Thanks,
Steve
My reading indicates this needs to be turned on server-side.
https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Spotlight
Is anyone doing this? Is it supported?
Hi @smanley,
Until this is compiled into EL7 samba, this will not be available.
To be able to use this, you will need to download the Samba source code, and compile yourself.
As a result, this would definitely not be supported.
Doing so may completely butcher Rockstor’s ability to manage Samba shares, as it tends to be pretty reliant on correct package versions etc.
I would also have serious doubts that anybody on this forum has tried such a thing on their Rockstor box.
While I’m not familiar with OSX or spotlight, I have the impression that you may be better off setting up AFP shares rather than Samba if you wish to use indexing.
Hi; Can I make a feature request for this?
I tried very hard to make AFP shares work but they are finicky at best and do not seem to advertise/announce correctly. I don’t believe I am alone in that boat 
I don’t wish to go down this road myself - that’s the point of using Rockstor. 
Thanks,
Steve
I’m not a Rockstor developer myself, so I can’t say with certainty, hower I strongly doubt that this will happen in the foreseeable future, simply because (as mentioned before) the CentOS (which Rockstor is based on) packages for Samba do not have this option compiled in.
This means compilining and distributing a custom Samba package, ensuring it’s version compatible with everything that Rockstor depends on, and maintaining it.
It’s an incredible amount of work for a small and likely seldom used feature.
As a general rule, you won’t find this on most NAS linux distributions (OMV, FreeNAS, etc) nor most commercial NAS appliances that are based on Linux (QNAP/Synology) for this reason.
For what it’s worth, a quick google search will confirm that this is not a small, nor a seldom used feature. It’s a major hassle with NAS integration on OSX.
It’s a major problem in my use case.
Fixing AFP shares would also resolve this as you mentioned previously. I can’t make those work reliably in conjunction with SMB shares.
I meant in the Rockstor community, where spotlight capability has been requested a grand total of 3 times in the past (each of these, they’re referring to AFP configs, not Samba)
You haven’t yet stated your issue with AFP sharing (which already has spotlight compatability built in).
This is something the community possibly can help out with.
If you want spotlight in Samba you will need to recompile it yourself from source and install it.
Until CentOS upstream provides packages with it built in, you won’t see this capability on anything based off CentOS.
If you do successfully compile it, please note that you will likely need to configure and manage your shares manually in the smb.conf, as Rockstor’s UI will not understand the extra config elements you need to setup.
I asked about AFP sharing and issues with announcing shares on the network. I also asked about issues with Time Machine. I was told to use SMB. My preference is to use AFP, but it does not appear to be enterprise-ready. Is this an incorrect assessment of affairs?
I am happy to support this project, as I have, and could a lot more - but it doesn’t help when something that is a concern elsewhere is greeted with “nobody asked here”. I would suggest that making it as easy to use with a fairly common application (lots of OSX clients) will help Rockstor gain market share.
Likewise, you could just say “thanks, we will put that under consideration”; vs. what sounds a lot less friendly. I could indeed set everything else up myself and compile it all. I am seeking to avoid doing that.
Please consider my feature request in the future, is all I ask. I’d also be willing to contribute a bounty to this, if such a system existed.
Best,
Steve
I’m not a Mac guy, I’m not a Rockstor developer, I’m just a Rockstor user. I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m mentioning again now - I can’t allow or deny any feature request, I can however speculate with educated guesses as to whether and when something might happen.
I do apologize for having missed your previous topics on AFP, however I cannot see where you were specifically advised to use SMB, only Phil’s post mentioning that Macs seem to be preferring SMB recently:
I might be wrong, and I might have missed something, so again, I apologize if this is the case
I would however agree that AFP is not enterprise ready.
I would also suggest that Samba Spotlight capability is equally not enterprise ready (Hence why it’s not compiled in for enterprise linux distributions)
Further to the above, I’d be hesitant to call Rockstor itself enterprise ready (sorry guys!) due to the lack of a maintained testing channel, and the reasonably frequent UI and package breakages.
This was not what I was suggesting at all. I was advising that little to no interest has been expressed in Spotlight indexing via Samba amongst the Rockstor community, and as a result this is not perhaps where developmental resources should be concentrated.
It seems to me that the resources drained attempting to include a feature wanted by a single user might be better spent fixing many of the ongoing issues, or features requested by many users.
While you’re correct that many people out there have OSX clients, I would be honestly surprised if many of them were connecting to linux shares supporting Spotlight indexing.
Regardless, even if were the case, until it’s provided upstream, it’s extraordinarily resource intensive to maintaining a custom package with all of the potential compatability issues, security patching, packaging and distribution.
I can’t really comment on this, as (as previously mentioned) I am not a Rockstor developer, just an avid user (and admittedly, a bit of a bastard).
In my original response, I attempted to be concise and factual.
You’ve continued to debate the necessity of the feature (which I have no real opinion one way or the other)
I’ve attempted time and time again to express that until this feature is compiled into the upstream package provided by CentOS (maintained by RHEL), it’s unreasonable to expect a very small development team to be able to provide it and keep it up to date.
The problem is that this cannot realistically be roadmapped until it’s provided upstream, unless you want to maintain it yourself.
Note that if and when the capability is included in the upstream packages, there will be nothing stopping you from enabling the feature in Samba custom config options.
If it’s something you desperately require before RHEL incorporates it, I continue to suggest that you compile it from source.
Remember that the Rockstor is maintained by only a few people (Near as I can tell, 5 or less primary contributors)
It is however provided as open-source software, which means that you’re welcome to fork it, modify it and submit pull requests if you’re so inclined.
I’d estimate that package maintenance for a custom compiled Samba package (including security patching etc) would be measurable in hours per week.
Regarding the bounty, It’s a lovely idea, but almost nobody is willing to contribute the actual value.
Let’s assume we’re looking at 1 hour per week (I’m pulling numbers out of my ass here, I expect that it would be greater than this)
I work as a developer earning ~$37/hr (low, I know - probably because I’m a bastard) so if I did this myself, it would equate to around $160/mo worth of time.
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