FreeNAS as Mac File Storage

[joobie]

Hi Guys,

Currently I use FreeNAS as both an AFP share for Mac Users and Time Machine backup.

The problem I have is that Spotlight searching doesn't work across the AFP share. The AFP share can be searched, it's just damn slow when there's a lot of content on it (in excess of 30 minutes at times).

I've done some reading across the forum into this and it looks like Spotlight won't work with FreeNAS.

1. Is slow searching across Mac AFP shares accepted as normal or is there a workaround i'm missing?
2. Has anyone gone down the route of attaching the FreeNAS as an iSCSI target to a Mac, creating AFP shares via the Mac on the iSCSI target and testing Spotlight this way? Does it / Will it resolve the issue?

Cheers, joo

 

[jgreco]

I'm pretty sure Spotlight is set up to avoid indexing remote files by default. A more thorough discussion of the topic is available at the Apple discussion forums (warning: very long).

1) Indexing remote files is potentially more stressy than searching remote files, depending on the number of clients and whatever strategy is used for sharing (or not sharing) the information, which I really can't offer any opinion on.

2) You can definitely do this and I can't see why it wouldn't work. On the other hand, this precludes you from directly sharing the iSCSI target (can't mount on multiple Macs). I think you understand that because it sounds like you know that you could then have one Mac mount the iSCSI target and then share that out via AFP.

 

[joobie]

Thanks jgreco.

At this stage one of my colleagues has been testing an application known as Easy Find ( https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/11076/easyfind ). It seems to be able to search AFP shares much quicker - at times we get a response back in 5 seconds. I've not looked into this tool myself, but thought i'd feed this back to the thread in case someone else is in a similar boat.

If this tool fails, we will likely go down the iSCSI route.


Cheers, joo

 

[Jerome Spilmont]

same problem to me. any solutions ? or do I have to mount an ISCSI disk ?
cheers

 

[J. Greg Williams]

Hi Guys,

Currently I use FreeNAS as both an AFP share for Mac Users and Time Machine backup.

The problem I have is that Spotlight searching doesn't work across the AFP share. The AFP share can be searched, it's just damn slow when there's a lot of content on it (in excess of 30 minutes at times).

I've done some reading across the forum into this and it looks like Spotlight won't work with FreeNAS.

1. Is slow searching across Mac AFP shares accepted as normal or is there a workaround i'm missing?
2. Has anyone gone down the route of attaching the FreeNAS as an iSCSI target to a Mac, creating AFP shares via the Mac on the iSCSI target and testing Spotlight this way? Does it / Will it resolve the issue?

Cheers, joo

By default spotlight doesn't index network volumes. You probably just need to turn this on.

from terminal.
# mdutil -s /Volumes/<nasmount> will show you the status of indexing
# mdutil -i on /Volumes/<nasmount> will turn it on.

 

[Jerome Spilmont]

I have activated the indexing of the mounted volume. the problem persists. Search is still slow

 

[J. Greg Williams]

Sorry that wasn't helpful. My 5-2TB disk raidz2 array responds within a minute. Certainly not as fast as my SSD in my laptop but not unusable either.

 

[JohnFLi]

I would LOVE to see mdutil -i on /Volumes/whatever actually work. I have tried that many times and many was on a SMB share and AFP shares. I just get the message 'indexing disabled'

But, when I setup iSCSI, it worked instantly and didn't have to do a darn thing.