[steve666]

In my previous old computer when i typed in something, like clamXav it would find every single thing the program installed on my computer.
I just trashed clamXav and I knew some things were left behind, yet when I went to the file-find function and typed it in nothing came up. I went through my system myself and found some things and deleted them.
Why didn't the find function find them?

[reader50]

Spotlight doesn't work so well outside your user folder. Before Spotlight (ie - in 10.3 and earlier) the Find function used to do an actual file search. Now it relies on the Spotlight indexes, which omit a lot of system-related folders.

When I need to do real searches, I use EasyFind.

[besson3c]

Unix find works well too...

find /path -iname "*whatever*"

will search /path for files containing "whatever" in them with the possibility of stuff before and after "whatever".

[P]

Find is crazy slow though. Usually you can use locate instead, but I'm not sure how that works with Spotlight installed, if the locate database is still updated or if it redirects to Spotlight. Will have to check some time.

[besson3c]

True, find does not maintain an index like the locate command or Spotlight, but it's an alternative to the GUI EasyFind thing which I would imagine doesn't operate off of an index either.

[TETENAL]

Open the Find dialog and type "clamXav" into the search field. Then click the + button to add a search criterium. In the criterium popup-button select Other… and find the "System files" criterium, select it and click OK. Then select "are included" in the other popup-button. Find then finds all files including system files that belong to clamXav.

If you do this often mark the checkbox that says "in menu" next to "System files" so that it appears in the criterium menu directly.

[steve666]

Its amazing that Apple would ruin such a helpful feature

[steve666]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

Open the Find dialog and type "clamXav" into the search field. Then click the + button to add a search criterium. In the criterium popup-button select Other… and find the "System files" criterium, select it and click OK. Then select "are included" in the other popup-button. Find then finds all files including system files that belong to clamXav.

If you do this often mark the checkbox that says "in menu" next to "System files" so that it appears in the criterium menu directly.

Thank you, i will try this.
clam just didn't work for me. i had some kind of worm that accessed my yahoo contact list and sent out emails that looked like they were coming from me. Very scary.
Is there any kind of software you or anyone can recommend to protect against this?

[P]

Originally Posted by steve666 

Thank you, i will try this.
clam just didn't work for me. i had some kind of worm that accessed my yahoo contact list and sent out emails that looked like they were coming from me. Very scary.
Is there any kind of software you or anyone can recommend to protect against this?

See this. If I read this correctly, the worm is not affected by antivirus tools on the client computer - the bug is on the Yahoo side.

[Thorzdad]

I'm happy to see someone else who misses the old, simple Find function. Spotlight has been near useless for me, in my experience with it. Cmd-F, for me, has come to mean "Frustration". Personally, I never found Find to be horribly slow. YMMV, I guess.

[steve666]

Originally Posted by P 

See this. If I read this correctly, the worm is not affected by antivirus tools on the client computer - the bug is on the Yahoo side.

Wow, thanks. I was going nuts trying to find something on my Mac. I thought I may have some problem because clamXav just wasn't working right, stopped in the middle of a scan. I guess I will relax now and not run out and buy Virus barrier.

[Mr_E]

Try Find Any File.
Works as advertised.

Find Any File

[steve666]

Originally Posted by Thorzdad 

I'm happy to see someone else who misses the old, simple Find function. Spotlight has been near useless for me, in my experience with it. Cmd-F, for me, has come to mean "Frustration". Personally, I never found Find to be horribly slow. YMMV, I guess.

The old Find was great, always found bits of programs that I had deleted so i could get everything related off my drive.
I used the tip from the other Post and it found 3 things that clam left on my drive so i deleted them.
Why would Apple make something so much less intuitive and useful? Who would think to click the + button and add anything from there?
Bizarre.

[reader50]

The biggest problem with Spotlight is that mdworker (the indexing process) does not index most system-related folders. And the Spotlight pref pane allows you to exempt folders from indexing for privacy, but does not allow you to add folders.

There are 3rd party utilities that can force the indexing of other locations, but it's a one-time shot. You have to keep manually updating the indexes for those locations, the automatic process will not maintain them.

/System/
/bin/
/opt/
/sbin/
/usr/
/private/etc/
/private/var/

None of the above locations will index on their own. Even if you add System Files to the Find results, I don't think that extends the indexing to actually include System locations. At most, it will add the base /Library/ folder.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

True, find does not maintain an index like the locate command or Spotlight, but it's an alternative to the GUI EasyFind thing which I would imagine doesn't operate off of an index either.

The reason the find tool is slow is that it traverses the file system in logical order. If EasyFind is well-written, I would assume it would do a catalog search instead, which would not involve an index either (unless you consider the catalog file itself to be a kind of index), yet would be far faster than /usr/bin/find.

Originally Posted by reader50 

The biggest problem with Spotlight is that mdworker (the indexing process) does not index most system-related folders. And the Spotlight pref pane allows you to exempt folders from indexing for privacy, but does not allow you to add folders.

There are 3rd party utilities that can force the indexing of other locations, but it's a one-time shot. You have to keep manually updating the indexes for those locations, the automatic process will not maintain them.

There used to be a _rules.plist file inside the /.Spotlight-V100 folder which contained all these exceptions, and from where you could delete them, after which they would automatically update just like any other folder. This doesn't seem to be there anymore, but there might be an equivalent file somewhere else.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by steve666 

Its amazing that Apple would ruin such a helpful feature

There are tens of thousands of files included in the BSD subsystem, this is probably a smart design decision for the vast majority of people.

[steve666]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

There are tens of thousands of files included in the BSD subsystem, this is probably a smart design decision for the vast majority of people.

I don't see it that way. When you trash an app folder there are still items left on the drive. It's nice to able to clear out everything.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by steve666 

I don't see it that way. When you trash an app folder there are still items left on the drive. It's nice to able to clear out everything.

I'm not sure I follow you... How does an app folder relate to the BSD subsystem?

[steve666]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

I'm not sure I follow you... How does an app folder relate to the BSD subsystem?

I just wanted to be able to find all the p.list, preferences, etc that get loaded when you install something and clear them out. On the old finder I would type in the app I just trashed and all the little things left on the drive would pop up and I could easily delete them.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by steve666 

I just wanted to be able to find all the p.list, preferences, etc that get loaded when you install something and clear them out. On the old finder I would type in the app I just trashed and all the little things left on the drive would pop up and I could easily delete them.

Ahhh.. we are talking about different things then. The .plist files should, in theory AFAIK, be indexed by Spotlight out of your home directory or a path such as /Library/Preferences or /System/Library/Preferences. The BSD subsystem resides in the paths listed above:

/System/
/bin/
/opt/
/sbin/
/usr/
/private/etc/
/private/var/

also /var, /etc, /dev, and in a non OS X BSD system, /lib, /libexec, /proc, /boot as well. End users in OS X should not have to interact with the vast majority of these files at all.

[AKcrab]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

The .plist files should, in theory AFAIK, be indexed by Spotlight out of your home directory or a path such as /Library/Preferences or /System/Library/Preferences.

Did you test your theory?

Spotlight .plist and tell me what you get, because I certainly don't get anything from ~/Library.

[steve666]

I'm not a techie, I think my head just exploded reading your Post!

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by AKcrab 

Did you test your theory?

Spotlight .plist and tell me what you get, because I certainly don't get anything from ~/Library.

No I didn't! Shame that these aren't indexed, and also surprising, and I apologize for these inaccurate assumptions.

[P]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

There are tens of thousands of files included in the BSD subsystem, this is probably a smart design decision for the vast majority of people.

Well...yes, but they don't change, excluding the odd system update. The index would grow slightly larger, but the indexing time wouldn't increase except for the odd remake of the entire index. If they only showed up when you selected "System Files" among the files the search, there would be no downside. I wonder why Apple did it this way?

Originally Posted by CharlesS

The reason the find tool is slow is that it traverses the file system in logical order. If EasyFind is well-written, I would assume it would do a catalog search instead, which would not involve an index either (unless you consider the catalog file itself to be a kind of index), yet would be far faster than /usr/bin/find.

All it would take in a situation like this is the old Find File/Sherlock application (which probably did a catalog search). It wasn't particularly fast, but it was WAY faster than the find command in the Terminal. I'm a big fan of Spotlight, but there are certainly times when the old Find File app could be useful.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by AKcrab 

Spotlight .plist and tell me what you get, because I certainly don't get anything from ~/Library.

You get if you include system files.

[AKcrab]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

You get if you include system files.

True. But it's about as hidden as it can be and still be called accessible.

[steve666]

Glad I'm not the only one who thinks this is odd. Maybe we should make some comments to Apple?

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by steve666 

I just wanted to be able to find all the p.list, preferences, etc that get loaded when you install something and clear them out. On the old finder I would type in the app I just trashed and all the little things left on the drive would pop up and I could easily delete them.

I get e-mails every once in a while from people that did stuff like that, ended up deleting some important system file that just happened to have a similar name to some app they were trying to get rid of, and consequently wanted to use Pacifist to get their system working again.

Just sayin'.

Although I will note that the exclusion of stuff in /System is somewhat selective — for example, all header files in /System/Library/Frameworks do get indexed. Try searching for an API name if you've got the dev tools installed. You'll get the header file that declares it (you'll also get a ton of other headers from /Developer/SDKs, which is kind of annoying, but fixable via Spotlight's Privacy pane).

[steve666]

I'm careful about what I dump. Not being able to find all the little software trails was annoying the crap out of me!