hdiutil - What is it and why is it consuming 99.9% of one my cores ...

hdiutil is something you run in Terminal to manipulate disk images. Some apps that you download come as a .dmg file. You double click the .dmg, and it mounts a disk image on your desktop. To complete the installation, you typically drag the app from the mounted disk image to your Applications folder.Any chance you've downloaded an app that came as a .dmg and you're running the app from the image rather than copying it to your Applications folder and running it form there?

I've got the exact same problem including the temporary respite via a restart. It's sitting there ticking away at 99.9% of one core. I'm not sure when this problem began but I first became aware of it since activating Time Machine in early April.

I've also noticed that ClamXav also runs a lot and appears to be scanning my TM sparse image. Any connection? I usually stop this by aborting scans in ClamXav Sentry.

I keep seeing this intermittent problem as well. Honestly can't remember when I first saw it, but it's been a while. I know hdiutil is used for mounting up disk images. And I do seem to notice the problem after recently working with an image(s). But I haven't been able to pin it down more specifically yet. And I've never noticed any ill effects from using "Force Quit" on it. Although I'm shell literate, I typically do it through Activity Monitor because that's where I watch my system.

Although I've occasionally run a program straight off a mounted image, I do that VERY infrequently. Much less often than I see the problem.

I've always assumed there is some problem in the unmount process of ejecting the disk images. Whenever I have noticed the CPU spike, I no longer have any images mounted.

Someone reported it as a bug to VersionTracker Pro.

http://www.versiontracker.com/php/feedback/article.php?story=20080405143610347

but I think they are really just stumbling over the root problem. Still, if they have a reproducible case, that could help debug it.

Spencer