The application Finder.app can't be opened.

You can issue a small AppleScript via SSH like

*osascript -e 'tell application "TextEdit" to quit'*

It will force the application to ask you to save open documents before quitting.

Installed 10.6.3 via software update. Re-enabled spotlight indexing on just my internal drive. 4 minutes later, an mdworker process died and took coreservicesd with it. coreservicesd failed to start with correct version information, after which nothing much works and the Finder spits out a -10180 error.

In other words - nothing has changed, at least for my failure scenario. Perhaps for some of you there is still hope. If you still have hope, cherish it.

I'm testing the various application launchers available, since that's all I used spotlight for anyway. Perhaps when seeds of 10.6.4 start making their way around I'll start to care again.

It appears we share the same bug. I re-enabled Spotlight and it crashed within seconds.
It also appears that the bug is generally worse as my machine will not crash with the very same problem with spotlight disabled within about 10 minutes.

Just an idle bit of speculation but how many of the people experiencing this problem are using McAfee VirusScan?

I'm not running any antivirus. I actually haven't triggered this bug for a long time, hopefully 10.6.3 fixed it in my case - I was only having trouble when connecting to SMB shares.

RadioSnow wrote:
I was only having trouble when connecting to SMB shares.

That was my failure case, too. Sorry for the false hope for you spotlighters.

I could generally trigger the issue with a minute or two of continuous browsing through folders on the SMB drive... but I haven't managed to hang the Finder since the update.

Update from a sufferer whose onset is definitely caused by Spotlight indexing:

I made the upgrade to 10.6.3. No other further attempts at a fix, or any particular changes to my system. Just the upgrade.

And surprise: Whereas previously turning on Spotlight indexing would bring on disaster within a minute or two, I've now had indexing running for hours under 10.6.3. So far, no problems! No Finder errors, no weirdness with Dock or menu bar, no keyboard death, nothing odd at all.

Indexing is looking to be painfully slow. Hours ago it said 79 hours remaining; now it says 78. Sometimes it goes down more, then back up to 79. Well, I expect a long indexing process, as it's being recreated from scratch; the important thing is that the bad stuff isn't happening.

So far, that is. I'll post an update again later. In the meantime, let me offer hope that 10.6.3 might be a fix for some users.

Looks like I'm having the same issue as a lot of people here (or something very similar).

It started a few days ago all of a sudden. I'm not entirely sure what caused it to start happening, but here are the symptoms:

- login sometimes fails (looks like it's logging in, but goes back to user choice screen)
- Finder stops responding, or disappears completely
- attempts to restart Finder get the dreaded -10180 error
- cmd+tab stops working or some apps missing
- force quit window doesn't show all working apps
- can drag app windows round, but they'll stop accepting keyboard input
- menu bar gets screwed up or shows the wrong app
- dock won't launch apps, but the apps folder keeps working (though it's not possible to launch stuff from it)
- once the symptoms start appearing it rapidly gets worst till it's not even possible to logout
- at some point a hard reboot becomes necessary
- an install of 10.6.3 since hasn't fixed it
- using onyx to delete cache files hasn't fixed it
- I tried deleting the user's dock and finder plist files which I thought helped but it came back (or it was just a coincidence)

I don't have any external drives plugged in or USB keys in when it goes wrong. I have a couple of network mounts (via NFS to a QNAP TS-219 NAS drive). The only other things connected to the iMac (Quad Core i7 27inch) are the standard keyboard and mouse (both bluetooth) and a ethernet cable to my router. None of this has changed recently.

In the system logs I get hundreds of these messages:

30/03/2010 20:56:56 com.apple.coreservicesd[180] _FreeSegGetNext: invalid marker.

followed by:

30/03/2010 20:56:56 com.apple.coreservicesd[180] * process 180 exceeded 500 log message per second limit - remaining messages this second discarded *
30/03/2010 20:56:56 com.apple.ReportCrash.Root[179] 2010-03-30 20:56:56.833 ReportCrash[179:2b03] Saved crash report for coreservicesd[180] version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/coreservicesd 2010-03-30-205656localhost.crash
30/03/2010 20:56:57 com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.coreservicesd) Throttling respawn: Will start in 7 seconds
30/03/2010 20:57:36 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[203] (com.apple.ReportCrash) Falling back to default Mach exception handler. Could not find: com.apple.ReportCrash.Self
30/03/2010 20:57:36 com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.metadata.mds[30]) Job appears to have crashed: Segmentation fault
30/03/2010 20:57:36 com.apple.ReportCrash.Root[179] 2010-03-30 20:57:36.748 ReportCrash[179:3a1f] Saved crash report for mds[30] version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/mds 2010-03-30-205736localhost.crash
30/03/2010 20:57:41 com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.loginwindow[32]) Job appears to have crashed: Segmentation fault
30/03/2010 20:57:42 com.apple.ReportCrash.Root[179] 2010-03-30 20:57:42.846 ReportCrash[179:411b] Saved crash report for loginwindow[32] version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/loginwindow 2010-03-30-205742localhost.crash
30/03/2010 20:57:46 com.apple.WindowServer[210] Tue Mar 30 20:57:46 Flexo.local WindowServer[210] <Error>: kCGErrorFailure: Set a breakpoint @ CGErrorBreakpoint() to catch errors as they are logged.

So it looks like coreservicesd is at fault but I'm not sure how or why. I'll try to reply to this with the crash report - perhaps it'll give someone here an idea of what went wrong. I can see a seg fault, possibly caused by a faulty pointer while trying to resolve a file system path.

I'm about to reinstall 10.6.3 from the combo update and see if that helps.

Here's the crash report (except the Binary Images part which doesn't look so useful):

Process: loginwindow [32]
Path: /System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS/loginwindow
Identifier: loginwindow
Version: ??? (???)
Code Type: X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [1]

Date/Time: 2010-03-30 20:57:36.319 +0100
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.6.3 (10D573)
Report Version: 6

Exception Type: EXC BADACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN INVALIDADDRESS at 0x000000000000003c
Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Thread 0 Crashed: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x00007fff84783301 SCGetSessionLocalUniverseInfo + 31
1 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x00007fff84783060 _SCSessionUniverseByUIDAcquireAndLock + 280
2 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x00007fff8478274f FSNodeStorageGetAndLockCurrentUniverse + 188
3 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x00007fff84789552 FileIDTreeGetVRefNumForDevice + 39
4 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x00007fff847894bd FSMount::FSMount(unsigned int, FSMountNumberType, short*) + 73
5 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x00007fff84787b8d PathGetObjectInfo(char const*, unsigned int, unsigned int, short*, unsigned int*, unsigned int*, char*, unsigned int*, unsigned char*) + 296
6 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x00007fff847879bc FSPathMakeRefInternal(unsigned char const*, unsigned int, unsigned int, FSRef*, unsigned char*) + 114
7 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x00007fff86d23fdd _CFGetFSRefFromURL + 829
8 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x00007fff86d23c90 CFURLGetFSRef + 48
9 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x00007fff84793600 GetUserDomainRootRef + 152
10 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x00007fff84793484 GetDomainRootRef + 762
11 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x00007fff847c2fe7 FolderManagerDeleteUserSpecificItems + 71
12 com.apple.loginwindow 0x000000010000d4f1 0x100000000 + 54513
13 com.apple.Foundation 0x00007fff8833b65b __NSThreadPerformPerform + 219
14 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x00007fff86d22f21 __CFRunLoopDoSources0 + 1361
15 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x00007fff86d21119 __CFRunLoopRun + 873
16 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x00007fff86d208df CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 575
17 com.apple.HIToolbox 0x00007fff805a7ada RunCurrentEventLoopInMode + 333
18 com.apple.HIToolbox 0x00007fff805a78df ReceiveNextEventCommon + 310
19 com.apple.HIToolbox 0x00007fff805a7798 BlockUntilNextEventMatchingListInMode + 59
20 com.apple.AppKit 0x00007fff87893a2a _DPSNextEvent + 708
21 com.apple.AppKit 0x00007fff87893379 -[NSApplication nextEventMatchingMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:] + 155
22 com.apple.AppKit 0x00007fff8785905b -[NSApplication run] + 395
23 com.apple.loginwindow 0x0000000100004ce6 0x100000000 + 19686
24 com.apple.loginwindow 0x0000000100004750 0x100000000 + 18256

Thread 1: Dispatch queue: com.apple.libdispatch-manager
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff80d1b4ea kevent + 10
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff80d1d3bd dispatch_mgrinvoke + 154
2 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff80d1d094 dispatch_queueinvoke + 185
3 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff80d1cbbe dispatch_workerthread2 + 252
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff80d1c4e8 pthreadwqthread + 353
5 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff80d1c385 start_wqthread + 13

Thread 2:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff80d1c30a _workqkernreturn + 10
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff80d1c71c pthreadwqthread + 917
2 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff80d1c385 start_wqthread + 13

Thread 0 crashed with X86 Thread State (64-bit):
rax: 0x000000000000003c rbx: 0x0000000000000000 rcx: 0x0000000000000001 rdx: 0x0000000000000000
rdi: 0x0000000000000000 rsi: 0x00007fff5fbfc230 rbp: 0x00007fff5fbfc210 rsp: 0x00007fff5fbfc1f0
r8: 0x00007fff70883ca8 r9: 0x0000000000000000 r10: 0x0000000000000034 r11: 0x0000000000000206
r12: 0x0000000000000020 r13: 0x00007fff5fbfc230 r14: 0x00007fff5fbfc500 r15: 0x00007fff5fbfdb20
rip: 0x00007fff84783301 rfl: 0x0000000000010206 cr2: 0x000000000000003c

Apologies for replying to my own posts, but I've just done a reinstall of 10.6.3 from the full combo update. While it was installing that the symptoms reappeared and it wasn't able to restart after the install. Finder and all apps hung and the menu bar disappearred. So, I left it 10 minutes or so till the hard drive activity stopped, then did a hard reboot.

After that it seemed fine for 5 minutes, but I've just seen the errors reappear in the logs.

Here's a list of the crash logs for today (using 'ls -ltr /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports'):

-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 10103 30 Mar 07:34 coreservicesd 2010-03-30-073440localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 9763 30 Mar 07:34 coreservicesd 2010-03-30-073445localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 9116 30 Mar 07:36 lsregister 2010-03-30-073626localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 16433 30 Mar 08:53 mdworker 2010-03-30-085315localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 10133 30 Mar 08:53 coreservicesd 2010-03-30-085317localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 12288 30 Mar 08:54 mds 2010-03-30-085407localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 27947 30 Mar 08:54 loginwindow 2010-03-30-085411localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 16192 30 Mar 08:57 mdworker 2010-03-30-085757localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 9138 30 Mar 08:57 lsregister 2010-03-30-085757localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 16216 30 Mar 09:01 mdworker 2010-03-30-090154localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 9138 30 Mar 09:01 lsregister 2010-03-30-090154localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 9114 30 Mar 09:25 lsregister 2010-03-30-092527localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 16216 30 Mar 09:25 mdworker 2010-03-30-092528localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 8551 30 Mar 20:51 lsregister 2010-03-30-205149localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 16217 30 Mar 20:54 mdworker 2010-03-30-205428localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 9115 30 Mar 20:54 lsregister 2010-03-30-205428localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 9892 30 Mar 20:56 coreservicesd 2010-03-30-205653localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 9893 30 Mar 20:56 coreservicesd 2010-03-30-205656localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 14456 30 Mar 20:57 mds 2010-03-30-205736localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 27947 30 Mar 20:57 loginwindow 2010-03-30-205742localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 15628 30 Mar 20:57 mdworker 2010-03-30-205754localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 9138 30 Mar 20:57 lsregister 2010-03-30-205754localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 10345 30 Mar 21:18 coreservicesd 2010-03-30-211816localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 9893 30 Mar 21:22 coreservicesd 2010-03-30-212205localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 9138 30 Mar 21:26 lsregister 2010-03-30-212617localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 9113 30 Mar 21:50 lsregister 2010-03-30-215050localhost.crash
-rw-rw----@ 1 root admin 16216 30 Mar 21:50 mdworker 2010-03-30-215052localhost.crash

The last two at 21:50 are from after the reboot, and here's the details from them:

Process: lsregister [254]
Path: /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchS ervices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister
Identifier: lsregister
Version: ??? (???)
Code Type: X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process: coreservicesd [55]

Date/Time: 2010-03-30 21:50:49.392 +0100
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.6.3 (10D573)
Report Version: 6

Exception Type: EXC BADACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN INVALIDADDRESS at 0x00000001027e6064
Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Thread 0 Crashed: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x00007fff8583190f _FreeSegGetLength(void const*, unsigned int) + 15
1 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x00007fff8584bd64 _TableAllocBytes(void*, unsigned int, unsigned int*) + 102
2 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x00007fff8584bbed CSStoreAllocBytes(_CSStore*, unsigned int, unsigned int, unsigned int*) + 91
3 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x00007fff8584bec2 CSStoreAllocUnitWithData + 77
4 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff811f730f CSCopyStringForCharacters + 107
5 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff811f7276 _LSDatabaseCreateStringForCFString + 98
6 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff8122209e _LSRegisterTypeDeclarations(LSDatabase*, unsigned int, LSBundleData const*, __CFDictionary const*, __CFString const*, unsigned int) + 869
7 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff81224470 _LSServerItemInfoRegistration + 5162
8 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff811e0153 _LSDispatchRegistration(LSContext*, char const*, LSRegistrationInfo*, AliasRecord const*, AliasRecord const*, unsigned char const*, unsigned int, unsigned int*) + 117
9 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff81226025 _LSRegisterDirectoryNode(LSContext*, FSNode*, LSRegistrationInfo*, AliasRecord const*, unsigned int*) + 748
10 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff811ce001 _LSFindOrRegisterBundleNode + 1155
11 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff811e27ed _LSDatabaseClean(LSDatabase*) + 277
12 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff811c5cb0 _LSContextInit + 768
13 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff811df529 _LSGetStatus + 21
14 lsregister 0x0000000100001a18 0x100000000 + 6680
15 lsregister 0x00000001000010cc 0x100000000 + 4300

Thread 1: Dispatch queue: com.apple.libdispatch-manager
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff834674ea kevent + 10
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff834693bd dispatch_mgrinvoke + 154
2 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff83469094 dispatch_queueinvoke + 185
3 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff83468bbe dispatch_workerthread2 + 252
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff834684e8 pthreadwqthread + 353
5 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff83468385 start_wqthread + 13

Thread 2:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff8346830a _workqkernreturn + 10
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff8346871c pthreadwqthread + 917
2 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff83468385 start_wqthread + 13

Thread 0 crashed with X86 Thread State (64-bit):
rax: 0x0000000000760064 rbx: 0x00000001027e6064 rcx: 0x00007fff5fbfc4bc rdx: 0x0000000102121980
rdi: 0x0000000102086000 rsi: 0x0000000000760064 rbp: 0x00007fff5fbfc3d0 rsp: 0x00007fff5fbfc3c0
r8: 0x00007fff5fbfc50c r9: 0x00007fff5fbfc4cc r10: 0x00000001024b1df0 r11: 0x00007fff5fbfc56c
r12: 0x0000000102086000 r13: 0x000000000009b980 r14: 0x0000000000000018 r15: 0x0000000000005bc8
rip: 0x00007fff8583190f rfl: 0x0000000000010206 cr2: 0x00000001027e6064



Process: mdworker [253]
Path: /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/Metadat a.framework/Versions/A/Support/mdworker
Identifier: mdworker
Version: ??? (???)
Code Type: X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [1]

Date/Time: 2010-03-30 21:50:49.323 +0100
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.6.3 (10D573)
Report Version: 6

Exception Type: EXC BADACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN INVALIDADDRESS at 0x00000001037e6064
Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Thread 0 Crashed: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x00007fff8583190f _FreeSegGetLength(void const*, unsigned int) + 15
1 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x00007fff8584bd64 _TableAllocBytes(void*, unsigned int, unsigned int*) + 102
2 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x00007fff8584bccb CSStoreAllocBytes(_CSStore*, unsigned int, unsigned int, unsigned int*) + 313
3 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x00007fff858acc2c CSStoreReallocUnit + 630
4 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff811f6e56 _CSArraySetCapacity + 100
5 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff811f78fb _CSArrayInsertValueCommon + 84
6 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff8122e8d6 CSArrayAppendValue + 82
7 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff81222f81 _LSRegisterDocumentTypes(LSDatabase*, unsigned int, LSBundleData const*, __CFDictionary const*) + 2461
8 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff812244d0 _LSServerItemInfoRegistration + 5258
9 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff811e0153 _LSDispatchRegistration(LSContext*, char const*, LSRegistrationInfo*, AliasRecord const*, AliasRecord const*, unsigned char const*, unsigned int, unsigned int*) + 117
10 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff81226025 _LSRegisterDirectoryNode(LSContext*, FSNode*, LSRegistrationInfo*, AliasRecord const*, unsigned int*) + 748
11 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff811ce001 _LSFindOrRegisterBundleNode + 1155
12 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff811e27ed _LSDatabaseClean(LSDatabase*) + 277
13 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff811c5cb0 _LSContextInit + 768
14 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff811d4dfc _LSRegisterSelf + 184
15 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff811d0a15 _LSApplicationCheckIn + 3629
16 com.apple.HIServices 0x00007fff883e20bd _RegisterApplication + 4397
17 com.apple.HIServices 0x00007fff883e8926 SetApplicationIsDaemon + 90
18 mdworker 0x00000001000080c2 0x100000000 + 32962
19 mdworker 0x0000000100001018 0x100000000 + 4120

Thread 1: Dispatch queue: com.apple.libdispatch-manager
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff834674ea kevent + 10
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff834693bd dispatch_mgrinvoke + 154
2 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff83469094 dispatch_queueinvoke + 185
3 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff83468bbe dispatch_workerthread2 + 252
4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff834684e8 pthreadwqthread + 353
5 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff83468385 start_wqthread + 13

Thread 2:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff8346830a _workqkernreturn + 10
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff8346871c pthreadwqthread + 917
2 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff83468385 start_wqthread + 13

Thread 0 crashed with X86 Thread State (64-bit):
rax: 0x0000000000760064 rbx: 0x00000001037e6064 rcx: 0x00000000000c0000 rdx: 0x0000000103146000
rdi: 0x0000000103086000 rsi: 0x0000000000760064 rbp: 0x00007fff5fbfb920 rsp: 0x00007fff5fbfb910
r8: 0x0000000000000000 r9: 0x0000000000000000 r10: 0x000000000000002c r11: 0x0000000000000206
r12: 0x0000000103086000 r13: 0x00000000000c0000 r14: 0x00000000000001f4 r15: 0x0000000000040000
rip: 0x00007fff8583190f rfl: 0x0000000000010202 cr2: 0x00000001037e6064

Just installed 10.6.3 and it appears to have made things worse. Can't keep a finder window open for more than two clicks. eg - try open documents and it vanishes. Been praying they'd fix this for months. Have given up hope and am ready to bin my Mac. It's a joke. It just doesn't work.

I think I may have fixed it - at least it's not occurred since the following changes...

First I tried using Onyx to rebuild launch services after reading this post here: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10365239-263.html but that didn't fix it.

It also mentioned external drives causing the issue, which other people have mentioned. I don't have any external USB/FW drives, but do have 2 NFS shares to a QNAP TS-219 NAS device. They're automounted using Disk Utility (File -> NFS Mounts...), so I removed those 2 entries and rebooted.

I also noticed that l had some log errors related to the Wacom Tablet driver and coreservicesd, so I downloaded the latest driver and reinstalled it.

The problem seemed to go away, so I re-enabled the NFS mounts, and created an empty .metadata neverindex file on the root directory of the mounts like this:

cd /Volumes/Network/Qdownload
touch .metadata neverindex

That should hopefully stop spotlight ever trying to reindex them. I got the filename from a macosxhints.com tip. Anyway, I've not had any more diagnostic dumps into /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports in the last 90 minutes, so it's looking promising

Still no reappearance of the main problem here after installing 10.6.3 – but not out of the woods either. After well over 12 hours, Spotlight indexing doesn't appear to have made progress one bit – it's gone back to its original "79 hours remaining" estimate, and the blue progress bar hadn't moved.

Diagnostic dumps include:

Thread 2 Crashed:
0 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x00007fff8174be7f CSStoreGetUnit + 84
1 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff8725123f _LSContainerCheckState + 65
2 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x00007fff8726806c _LSCopyLibraryItemURLs + 419
3 mdworker 0x0000000100003795 0x100000000 + 14229
4 mdworker 0x00000001000040b2 0x100000000 + 16562
5 mdworker 0x0000000100004583 0x100000000 + 17795
6 mdworker 0x0000000100008f32 0x100000000 + 36658
7 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff806588b6 pthreadstart + 331
8 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff80658769 thread_start + 13

Thread 2 crashed with X86 Thread State (64-bit):

So, still no Spotlight. : (

jevlewt - is there any way to force a complete refresh of spotlight indexing? that is, clear out all its data and get it to start from scratch. if it's locked up and crashing due to bad data then it might help.

ph.

Phil,

You can try in Terminal:

sudo mdutil -E /

followed by

sudo mdutil -i on /

It should then take about 12 hours to run.

I am sitting with a big smile on my face as it is "so far so good" for the first time since last September. I have daisy chains of external hard drives all sitting whirring, moving events round between various computers and iPhoto libraries. External hard drives waking out of sleep. One EHDD (a Freecom 1TB FW400) which would not work at all, is working perfectly. I used the combo updater on all our machines. For safety, I have still got Spotlight disabled on external drives.

Wilson