Script to delete V100-spotlight file during rebuild macOS metadata fails on Catalina

[glawrie]

I am having trouble with spotlight on my 2015 MBA 13.  Running macOS 10.15.3.  Someone suggested I use the Alfred metadata reset to trigger a reindex of spotlight.

 

I am running Alfred 4.0.8 with powerpack.

 

I started the process to reset meta data, and clicked on the option to delete the spotlight V100 file.  When I got to the part where I authorise the deletion I got this result...

Attempting to delete .Spotlight-V100...

Password:
rm: /System/Volumes/Data/.Spotlight-V100: Operation not permitted

Requesting metadata reindex...

It fails.  The user account has full permissions (I can get SUDO -S to work from a terminal window), so it should have worked.  My guess is that the difference is that Catalina introduces "Read Only" system volume feature (see description here).

 

I think this might be somewhere / something that needs an update - but of course maybe I'm just doing it wrong.

 

Grateful for any advice.

 

 

Edited March 10, 2020 by glawrie

[vitor]

 

 

[glawrie]

Thanks - I did search for spotlight in forum prior to posting but it turned up nothing.  Will download the beta and see what happens :)

[vitor]

5 minutes ago, glawrie said:

Will download the beta and see what happens

 

The point of the beta was to make the messaging clearer. What you need to do is

 

Quote

give Terminal.app Full Disk Access (in the macOS Security & Privacy)

 

[glawrie]

Hi - Yes I got that from reading the other posting (not sure I spotted where the messaging was clearer between 4.0.8 and 4.0.9 beta - too subtle for me).  Thanks for your help - have triggered the rebuild now and hopefully that will do the trick.