macos – Spotlight not functional

Sonoma 14.4.1 on MacBook Pro M1.

Spotlight (cmd+spacebar and from the menubar) cannot find any file. It only finds (sometimes) the apps in the /Applications folder. Correspondingly, search in Mail also does not work. Only search with Finder can find files.

Before you answer with ideas let me tell what I tried, with temporary and/or mixed success. (All that follows, in various combination and alone)

1. sudo mdutil -X / and mdutil -E /
2. sudo mdutil -i on and then off
3. reboot
4. create new account and see
5. kill and restart the processes corespotlightd and Spotlight
6. check in syslog and other logs to see if there is any clue. Nothing obvious.
7. also add and then remove the whole disk, or only my own home directory, in the “Privacy” in System setting.
8. reinstall all of Dropbox, OneDrive (just in case!)

Sometimes, after (1) I get some hits for a few minutes and then it is all again back to zero. Sometimes after (5) I get some hits and after a few minutes back to zero.

Sometimes it seems to be indexing after (1), but most of the times nothing really happens.

I can’t upgrade because policy administration prevents update (but I do have admin access to the computer, so I can run sudo).

I am running out of ideas.