Mac – How to get OS X to index the Network Volumes with Spotlight

NOTE: See (also) a corrected/improved answer in the question itself.

Following solution worked for me:

Open a terminal and backup com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist which you're going to change in a second:

$ cd /System/Library/LaunchDaemons
$ sudo cp com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist{,_bak}

convert binary plist to xml:

$ sudo plutil -convert xml1 com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist

and open it with your favorite text editor

$ sudo vim com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist

it'll look something like this:

 1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 2 <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
 3 <plist version="1.0">
 4 <dict>
 5     <key>EnableTransactions</key>
 6     <true/>
 7     <key>HopefullyExitsLast</key>
 8     <true/>
 9     <key>Label</key>
10     <string>com.apple.dynamic_pager</string>
11     <key>OnDemand</key>
12     <false/>
13     <key>ProgramArguments</key>
14     <array>
15         <string>/sbin/dynamic_pager</string>
16         <string>-F</string>
17         <string>/private/var/vm/swapfile</string>
18     </array>
19 </dict>
20 </plist>

In line 17 modify /private/var/vm/swapfile (e.g. /Volumes/partition2/swapfile), save and close your editor (":x" will do both in vim).

convert the plist file back to binary:

$ sudo plutil -convert binary1 com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist

After rebooting your Mac you should find the swapfiles in the directory you specified.

If you run into any problems you can restore the backup you created in the first step with:

$ cd /System/Library/LaunchDaemons
$ sudo cp com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist{_bak,}

Open up terminal app and type in:

mdutil -a -i off

mdutil -- manages the metadata stores used by Spotlight

-a applies for all volumes

-i turns indexing on or off

For more help type in terminal:

man mdutil

EDIT:

If you prefer not to use the Terminal, you can use this paid software Spotless.