Questions[search-server](server)

I have several shares residing on a samba server in a small business environment that I would like to provide search facilities for. Ideally this would be something like google desktop with some extra features (see below), but lacking this the idea is to take what I can get, or at least get an idea for what is out there.

Using google desktop search as a reference model, the principle additional requirement is that it is usable from clients over the network. In addition there are some other notes (note that none of these are hard requirements)

• The content is always files, residing on a single server, accessible from samba shares.
  • Standard ms office document fare
  • Also a lot of rars and zips which it is necessary to search inside.
• Permissions support, allowing for user-based control to reflect current permission access in samba shares.
  • The userbase will remain fairly static, so manual management of users is fine.
• majority of users will be Windows based

I know there are plenty of search indexers out there: beagle and tracker seem to be the most popular. Most do not seem to offer access control and web-based/remote search does not seem to be high priority. I've also seen a recent post on the samba mailing list asking for pretty much the exact same thing. (They mention a product called IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition and while their initial reception seems positive, I am pretty skeptical. RHEL 4? Firefox 2? Updated much?)

edit: similar question here

What else is out there? Are you in a similar situation? What do you use?

I would like to search files in my lan easily. (over 500k files on SMB shares, it would take ages with other ways)

I mean, i just need to do a quick search on file names, i don't care content indexing at all, as most of my files are in a proprietary format, and the file name is explicative enough. But, date range filters are a must for me.

I just need a quick search like voidtools' everything can do, but in a network way

The files are on a WHS box (lol, Videos and Music share names are not appropriate for a company, but a license for that win2003-based os is cheaper than an xp home one!)

I tried:

1. Lansearch pro: it is not good for me, as i need a quick index
2. Network Search Engine: it would be perfect, but does not offer a date range filter
3. Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express, but it is horrible! First, does NOT index filenames, and then, my Core2Duo is not powerful enough to run it smoothly.
4. Google Desktop with a proxy on localhost to make it run on the lan, but i don't like the hacked result.
5. The preinstalled Windows Search 4.0 but it sucks totally in choosing the relevance of data - uninstalled
6. Docco... what's that?

I am considering to try:

1. Ibm omnifind
2. DocFetcher (can it work as a client? did not investigated yet)
3. Strigi (it looks like that it can work as a client, right?)

Any ideas/suggestions?

Users would like to able to quickly search shared folders etc. on the server.

What are the PRO's and CON's of these two technologies?

Out of curiosity, is anyone here using Google Mini or Google Search Appliance to provide intranet search? Was it easy to set up? What kind of prices do they charge (ball park figure, I'm sure it depends on the customer)?

I have Windows Search 4 running on an installation of Server 2008 x64, indexing two specific directories.

Is it possible to have a web interface to query this catalog?

On an older server (Server 2003) we are using the Indexing Service and the following sample to query that index:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms692879(VS.85).aspx

This is working perfectly, and we just want to take advantage of the Search 4.0 features/performance in the same web format.

I have looked at Search Server Express and it's not quite what we're looking for. I have also seen a couple references to use the Microsoft.Search.Interop but I don't know how to put it all together in an aspx page.