When we first installed Leopard Server, we found that Spotlight wasn’t working on the server by default. A number of people have also found this to be true, and some people have suggested it may have something to do with installing on to a RAID 1 drive setup (as we did).

The following is a possibly solution to get Spotlight working if you are having this issue¹.

1. Login in to your server as an administrator.
2. Open the Terminal application (in your /Applications/Utilities folder)
3. Type the following exactly as written in to the Terminal:
   
   

   sudo rm /.metadata_never_index

   It will ask you for your password. You may get a “file not found” error, as the file has only been reported as being there for some users. Regardless, move to step 4.

4. Type the following in to the Terminal:
   
   

   sudo mdutil -i on /

Spotlight in the right corner of the menu of your server login should indicate it is indexing, and before long will start working.

1. This post is based on a discussion in Apple Discussions, and fixed the problem we had been having with out server.