PDF ifilter for MOSS 2007

In order to index pdf documents and their content, you need to install an out of box ifilter (ex. Adobe) on the Indexing Server(remember it is the indexing server and not the web front end server). This is what I did :

• I stopped the IIS admin service on the Indexing server and WFE server
• Installed the ifilter on the Indexing server
• Added the icpdf.gif image(pdf icon - search in google for this one) to the WFE server (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\12\Template\Images)
• Added the following pdf mapping in the Docicon.xml file (C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web server extensions\12\Template\Xml\DOCICON.XML)
• Added the pdf file type to SSP -> Search Settings -> File Types
• Did an iisreset(on both the web and index server) and started a full crawl on the required content sources

Initially, I installed it only on the web front end server and though it would crawl the pdf's, it would throw an error like "the file might be corrupted or could not load the item". Later I realised that it needs to be installed on indexing and not web front end server. Hope this helps someone....