I have read several forums which discuss the "Could not set indexing status for volume" error message from mdutil, but none of the responses explain why this happens. There are several reasons for getting this error message from mdutil, the tool for changing Spotlight settings. Here are a few of the reasons, and the remedies...
If Spotlight is already Disabled, attempting to do sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/your_vol will result in this error message. There are at least two reasons for mdutil to believe that Spotlight is disabled.
The first is that the volume was mounted and had a .metadata_never_index file at its base. The remedy is to remove that file in Terminal:
sudo rm -f /Volumes/Your Volume/.metadata_never_indexThen dismount and remount your_vol. If it is on your internal hard drive, do a restart instead.
sudo mdutil -s /Volumes/your_volIf you still get an error message, check for that .metadata_never_index file. Otherwise, you should get a confirmation message about the status, either Enabled or Disabled. If it is Disabled, try turning it on, as follows:
sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/your_volThat should confirm it is enabled. You can then turn it off, if you wish, as follows:
$ sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/your_vol $ sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/your_volThat last command discards the Spotlight database, something that takes up lots of space.
sudo touch /Volumes/your_vol/.metadata_never_indexYou may have noticed I've used /Volumes/your_vol as the reference to the volume where either .metadata_never_index or .spotlight-V100 exists.
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