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Monday, December 28, 2009

The Technologist: Spotlight Versus Pro Tools - The Devil Is In The Details

So, was it possible to recover a core system service once it’s basically been destroyed? Well, technically yes

As any Pro Tools user can tell you, the devil is in the details.

Making sure that your system is properly optimized makes all the difference, as I found in my month-long battle with Spotlight.

It all began when I started having random kernel panics, which seemed to be attributable to a Spotlight conflict. So, I set out to correct the issue.

As specified by Digidesign on the DUC:
“If Spotlight Indexing is running in the background, this can cause errors in Pro Tools. You should make your recording and playback drives ‘private’ which will disable Spotlight indexing on those drives.” (via Digidesign)

This was easy enough to verify, but did not correct the issue. As I like to be extremely thorough, I found a way to permanently disable Spotlight on my machine. I hoped that this would fix the problem.

Oh how wrong I was! Had I been in my right mind, I would have remembered that Spotlight is the global search service for OS X.

Whoops? Yeah…

Thus, as one of the (seemingly) many Pro Tools users who has disabled Spotlight Indexing, only to have other application search services hobbled as well, I went looking for a suitable alternative.

While I appreciated the boosts in system performance after disabling Spotlight, I still wanted the ability to search across volumes, within packages and hidden files, etc. Really all I needed (I thought) was the ability to search for file names, not file contents.

Thankfully, EasyFind by DEVONtechnologies (freeware) had me covered on both fronts.

Granted, it wasn’t as fast as Spotlight since it searches for each query separately, as opposed to using the Spotlight Metadata system, but I could at least search now.

Did this solve my problem? Not hardly.

Unfortunately, my problem was actually caused by a rather complex and unrelated driver issue.

However, once the real problem was solved, I really wanted Spotlight back as I was beginning to miss the ability to search within files.

So, was it possible to recover a core system service once it’s basically been destroyed?

Well, technically yes.

For most users, my recommendation would be to utilize whatever flavor of full system re-installation they are most comfortable with.

However, if you’re like me and just aren’t willing to sacrifice your machine to that much downtime, I found Pacifist to be a lifesaver.

Basically, it allows you to reinstall the components of the operating system that you decide need repaired. This, obviously, is not for the feint of heart.

My methodology was extremely unscientific, as I just searched around and installed anything that looked related to Spotlight.

However, after a restart and using Cocktail to force a Spotlight index, my machine is now purring along nicely.

Is there a moral to all this?

Well, not mucking around with core services is always a good start; however, knowledge of the resources to trust in a hurry like the DUC, Apple Support, or the RE/P forums on ProSoundWeb are crucial, as they are the staples that will help to carry you through a crisis much like this.

The Technologist, a.k.a. Kyle P. Snyder, is an audio engineer with innumerable credits in the public and private sector, writing about audio engineering, recording technology, and a multitude of other tropics for ProSoundWeb.

Find out more about Kyle at his website, http://kpsnyder.com/

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