Spotlight

Disable Spotlight

Edit /etc/hostconfig and add (or edit) the following line:

SPOTLIGHT=-NO-

Remove Spotlight Indexes

To get rid of the existing index, run these two commands from Terminal:

mdutil -i off /
mdutil -E /

The first command disables indexing on the root volume, and the second erases the existing template. You can then use Activity Monitor to kill any mds or mdimport processes or just reboot.

Reactivating Spotlight

Edit /etc/hosconfig and change the SPOTLIGHT variable to:

SPOTLIGHT=-YES-

Then run in Terminal:

mdutil -i on /

to re-enable the index generation and reboot.