Spotlight "Indexing and searching disabled." message in terminal on OSX. Why?
FINALLY!! I got it working again!

Heres what I did:

In terminal I ran:

locate .metadata_never_index


No database existed, so it prompted me to run:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.locate.plist


It ran for a few seconds and I retried the locate command.. it found it in my root. I deleted it and tried turning on spotlight again, but still got the "indexing and searching disabled."

I checked the permissions of my SSD and my account wasn't even listed. I added myself to read/write. Then ran:

sudo mdutil -i on /


terminal returned "Indexing enabled."

Lastly.. I went to system preferences>spotlight>privacy.. dragged my SSD then removed it to reindex. 40 minutes later.. everything is back to normal! It had been a year since spotlight worked on my MBP. Ohhh the struggles I faced trying to find emails/files.

Thanks for the tips and suggestions everyone and Google!