Continuous 'Service Exited in system log

This can also occur when migrating from a version of OS X/MacOS that didn't require signed mdimporters (usually provided by apps claiming file name suffixes). They'd be found in /Library/Spotlight/ and they can be deleted by sudo from someone with administrator access. Like throwing a switch and those messages stop in the system log.

Found out by forcing a Spotlight re-index and got a pop-up message saying the UID mdworker.shared.0A000000-0500-0000-0000-000000000000 or so, the second numerical field would be a volume that can't be scanned by an unsigned mdimporter and the process gets killed (too fast for you to get the identifying info in the Activity Monitor).

The one I recall adding in Mavericks was epub.mdimporter (an archive). Managed to pass all the way through the Migration Assistant for Big Sur 11.1 (on a Macbook Air M1).

Getting rid of the messages made my day.

Google Drive File Stream

and/or

Google Drive Sync

Do any of you have that installed?

I read something on here mentioning TimeMachine. I cancelled the current backup, which slowed up the errors. There were still several coming through, but many less. I closed out of Drive File Stream, and it slowed up more.

I then ran this in terminal again:

sudo mdutil -E /

ERRORS STOPPED!

So, as others have mentioned, this must be something related to network mounting and/or virtual /Volumes. They're saying that Drive File Stream still is not compatible with the M1 chips, but I'm gathering that really means not compatible with Big Sur 😕

In case anyone NEEDS to use Drive File Stream, here's a quick workaround:

https://github.com/slw07g/googledrivefs-patch

the errors still roll through, but DFS works.

There seem to be three categories of people posting in this thread:

(1) People whose computers are running poorly

(2) People who have been alerted to this SIGKILL message in the system.log and looked and found many such messages in their system logs

(3) People who have some other problem

The existence of many of these messages in the system log is not necessarily connected to a problem with the computer. These may well be debug or informational messages for Apple programmers. My MacBook Pro 16-inch, obtained new in May of 2020, had those system log messages when brand new and still does, sometimes 10 per second, sometimes fewer. The computer runs fine and has no issues at all.

Meanwhile, scores of people in categories (1) or (3) are also posting here, but this may have no connection to the system log messages of (2). Some have improved their computer performance by stopping file indexing for Spotlight, but that may have nothing to do with (2). Of course the messages in (2) go away when one does that since those messages come from the MDS process.

People are confusing the fact that two things happen together with there being a causal relationship between them.

If your computer is sluggish or crashing, look elsewhere for the cause than this system log message because it appears (at least on mine) in normal computers that are running well.

The real problem seems to be the mds_stores process since the "Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[6]" messages stop once indexing is finished (i.e. when all mdworker_shared instances have stopped and no new ones are created).

Then mds_stores continues to run for days at 30 to 100% CPU writing 10GB/Day to disk and keeping the fans running continuously.

I've stopped the indexing using mdutil, cleared the index, rebuilt the index etc. It always ends up with mds_stores running amok

This problem appeared right after the Security Update 2020-003 on Mojave.

Currently the only way to fix this is by stopping the indexing service rendering Spotlight inoperable.

In short Security Update 2020-003 broke Spotlight

Turned out that the reason of multiple mdworker.shared.xxxx sigkills was qualys cloud agent. Uninstalled - 'sudo /Applications/QualysCloudAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/qagent_uninstall.sh', errors gone. BUT: I rebought my MacBookPro from ex-employer, so had all rights to do it, for some people it might be not an option.

P.S. The reason I ever looked in system log was an annoying sound card muffling after some 10-15 seconds of playing. Decided to see what's happening in my system, found mdworker.shared.xxxx errors, eliminated, sound muffling gone with it...

AxeBox360 wrote:

The problem still exists on Big Sur. I would be great to have a more detailed log that explains why Spotlight won't index files and why the threads keep crashing. I've been troubleshooting this for a week.

Disk utility doesn't find any problems

Rebuilding using the GUI - doesn't fix it.

Rebuidling with the mdutil command - doesn't fix it.

At this point I'm going to do a fresh install on my Macbook.

When you do the fresh install, consider (you of course don't have to do this, and it does take longer, but I think it will enable you to identify the root cause of your problem and get back to a smoothly running Mac faster) backing up everything (two backups, for safety), spot-check that you can restore from the backups, and then you can reformat the disk and do a brand new MacOS install, from Recovery mode. On first boot, you can create one admin user with a different name from any of your previous ones. Then run all the MacOS updates and check that the problem is gone, on a fresh vanilla install with no third party software or extensions. If the problem is still there, you may have a hardware problem. If the problem is gone, run Migration Assistant and migrate over your old user accounts and their files, but no software and no settings. Then you can install the latest versions of third party software one or two at a time and retest. The goal is to find the item that, when installed, is conflicting with the smooth running of Catalina. I have followed this procedure myself, and it fixed the issue, which for me was a computer that would hang when booting. I only reinstalled the software I needed, hence a number of older mostly unused items were never reinstalled, and I am guessing one of them was the culprit because the problem was gone.

So, as promised....

1. Performed a bog standard re-install of Catalina. (I read that Big Sur and Creative Cloud have/had some issues, so....)
2. Created Admin account.
3. Looked at console, activity monitor, etc. and all seems quiet on the western front. CPU is 95% idle, Memory pressure is minimal.
4. Installed the available update. CPU and Memory pressure remain minimal.

Attached USB Time Machine volume (month old 4 TB SATA HDD in USB 3 dock) to prepare for Migration Assistant.

CPU load graph looks like a small mountain range, going up and down, but not yet crossing 50%

Memory pressure is unchanged

Console (system.log) mdworker.shared is going nuts. At 13:30:34, PID 2027 was killed. At 13:35:45, PID 3379 was killed. That's 1350 processes spawned and killed in just 5 minutes.

Unmount the TM disk

mdworker messages instantly stop

followed by burst of ~15 messages 30 seconds later

no more messages for 7minutes, two messages appeared 4 minutes ago, but nothing since.

CPU back around 90-95% idle

Just as a side note, I tried to add the TM disk to Spotlight Privacy, but got the error message: can't add a TM volume to privacy. Curious.

aokubo wrote:

<beach balling and etre check report--please help.log>

Try uninstalling Webroot by following the developer's instructions. Anti-virus and third party security products are not needed on a Mac and they usually cause more problems than they solve. Plus they impact system performance. If the AV software is required by your school or employer, then contact your school/employer for assistance in troubleshooting your issue.

Also make sure your Seagate software is up to date. Instead of installing the third party proprietary software for managing your external drive you should have initially had macOS configure and manage the external drive. Third party proprietary drivers for external drives can cause problems especially when an OS update is installed.

It may also help if you can provide us a copy of the Kernel Panic log(s). Launch the Console app and look in the folders on the left pane of the Console app with names similar to: "Diagnostic Reports", "System Reports", "/var/log", or "/private/var/log". I'm sorry I cannot be more specific, but Apple has changed their locations a few times over the years. The Kernel Panic file name will begin with "kernel" and end in ".panic". If you more than one Kernel Panic log, then attach several of the most recent ones. Attach the logs in the same manner you attached the EtreCheck report.

The Spotlight errors concern me since they appear to be possible memory related errors, but until Webroot is uninstalled it is to hard to tell for certain.

Ok today the new Security Update 2020-004 for Mojave and 10.15.6 came out.

I updated both on my 2 Macbook Pros one running Cataline and another running Mojave

and this still goes on. They didn't fix it in either of them :(

System log still running crazy 24/7 if you have Spotlight active. Turn Spotlight completely off and it goes away as before.

It have to take some system resources and battery so my Spotlight is off, totally. Sucks.

Jul 16 01:58:06 MBPr15-2018 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.0E000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000[1130]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[81]

Jul 16 01:58:06 MBPr15-2018 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.01000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000[1142]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[81]

Jul 16 01:58:06 MBPr15-2018 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.03000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000[1141]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[81]

Jul 16 01:58:06 MBPr15-2018 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.06000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000[1132]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[81]

Jul 16 01:58:06 MBPr15-2018 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.0C000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000[1134]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[81]

Jul 16 01:58:08 MBPr15-2018 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.08000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000[1144]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[81]

Jul 16 01:58:09 MBPr15-2018 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.09000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000[1145]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[81]

Jul 16 01:58:09 MBPr15-2018 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.05000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000[1143]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[81]

Jul 16 01:58:13 MBPr15-2018 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.0D000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000[1146]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[81]

Jul 16 01:58:14 MBPr15-2018 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.07000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000[1147]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[81]

Jul 16 01:58:14 MBPr15-2018 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.02000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000[1148]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[81]

Jul 16 01:58:14 MBPr15-2018 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.04000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000[1149]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[81]

Jul 16 01:58:14 MBPr15-2018 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.0F000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000[1150]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[81]

I posted some time ago here, but in that post I noted that I obtained a new 16-inch MacBook Pro in May 2020 and saw this MDS SIGKILL thread right after getting this new computer. Upon inspection, I saw those numerous other "error messages" in my Console log as well, but my computer shows none of the symptoms that others have mentioned, such as battery drain, overheating, fans amok, etc. Since this message appears in "normal" Macs I don't think it is a symptom of any issue. The issues some of you have with MDS or Spotlight are no doubt real, but I don't think there are any clues in the SIGKILL log entries, those occur in morally functioning Macs as well. Some have noted that this may be a regular communication between MDS and other Apple processes that in and of itself is not indicative of a problem.

The real problems are not log entires but are those MDS runaways, batteries running down, cpus bogged down. From what I have read in this thread, there are multiple causes for those problems, as there often are with many different computers of different vintages, OS, and configurations. So trying to find one common cause might be fruitless. Tuning off Spotlight might eliminate the problem for some users, but Spotlight functions normally in the vast majority of systems, that should not be necessary. I have a suspicion that something has been installed that causes a conflict. Do these problems happen even in safe mode?

I installed almost nothing on my new MacBook Pro except Office 365. I consider it like an experiment with a "clean install" and it showed the SIGKILL messages when new and has no performance issues. For those having problems, rather than just disabling Spotlight, I would try to find the conflicting software, which may be different for different computers. Otherwise it is still lurking in there, like a little time bomb likely to cause future problems, with or without Spotlight. If my computer were really slowing down like some have reported, with no success in troubleshooting, I would backup to two different disks, erase/format and install a new OS and bring over just user accounts and files, no apps nor settings, and then reinstall things one or two at a time and look for a reoccurrence. Not of SIGKILL messages, but of the performance issues.

Hey! Haven't read all the replies (there are a lot of them lmao) but i came here looking for something similar. Sometimes mi mac wont turn off (i have to force shutdown). Reading the log i found the same error message ifestos posted. At first i thought it was the mail app being a piece of sh#t as always has been, but reading some of your comments i agree it might be Google Drive File Stream doing weird things on my computer. Under System Preferences i disabled Spotlight search on my google drive virtual disk and ~/Library/Application Support/Google/DriveFS (cache folder). Just wanted to 'take a sit' so i receive mail updates from this thread

Thats what i found out too.

Turn off spotlight and it stops. The thing is. If you have spotlight on.

It never stops writing that log. It keeps going 24/7 :( not exactly nice.

The message is harmless as you say. But it must use lot of system resources

to keep doing that over and over ?

I was working on troubleshooting a different problem when I came across this thread. Thank god I did because disabling Spotlight on my 2016 MacBook Pro just stopped the system log from incrementing, cooled my laptop way down and quieted the fan, and the battery life has been massively better. Night and day.

I kind of like the Spotlight feature though so I hope they fix this.

Me, too. I am on latest release Mojave 10.14.6 on iMac (27-inch, Late 2013).

Does anyone running Mojave or Catalina with Spotlight enabled and running NOT see this repeated in system.log?

This might be some "normal" sloppy operation of mdworker using processes instead of threads . I notice multiple queries about this on various Mac forums. Here is what I see:

1. When I drag all of my HDs into exclusion list (System Preferences:Spotlight:Privacy) then all of the "mdworker" processes with argruments "-m com.apple.mdworker.shared" eventually go away.
2. When I remove any disk then it begins again.
3. The same three mdworker processes are always running in both "1." and "2." above, one for the two "Admin" users I have on this machine and one dedicated to spotlight, 89 in my case:

$ dscl . -list /Users UniqueID | grep 89
_spotlight               89

... snip...  com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.mail.03000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000[6758]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[89]

and I can see multiple processes "mdworker_shared" with argument -"s mdworker-mail" being created and killed...

It does not seem to matter if I have "Mail & Messages" selected in the "Search Results" of the Spotlight System Prefs.

It does not seem to being any harm other than spewing on the system log. Only one of three User accounts on this machine actually uses Apple Mail, so maybe that is why I see the process spawned to scan Mail messages being killed. If so, seems sloppy to do it this way...

I was on at the beginning and no matter if a clean new fresh install or an old with tons of application.

This happen and Apple didn't fix it yet.

We started noticed this back on High Sierra and now we'r on Big Sur, it's a joke really.

I know of 3 people who reported this to Apple but still didn't fix it.

Let's see when they do. I had to turn of Spotlight completely on all my Mac's. 5 of them.