Continuous 'Service Exited in system log

Yea, they are folders on your disk but act like virtual drives (at least GDrive) someone pointed out those services may interrupt Spotlight indexing causing the continuous exit. I you are using only iCloud it shouldn’t be that.

maybe Adobe’s CC software? Or maybe some older version of any sync software?

I have discovered that it has to do with the indexing of my Lacie 5Tb USB drive, which I use as a time machine disk. As soon as I disconnect it, the messages stop. As soon as I connect they reappear. Excluding it from Spotlight is not possible, it being a time machine disk.

It also seems to solve the problem of high CPU usage by the mail process. Not that I understand why that is.

To try to narrow down the cause of the sluggishness, have you booted into Safe Mode and checked in Safe Mode, is the issue still there? Have you logged out and logged in as another user to see if it is user-specific or system-wide? Have you run Disk Utility in Recovery mode to repair the file system? Also, posting the output from Etrecheck may provide clues, lots of people can pore over the Etrecheck output and find things, sometimes poor performance is connected to something that was installed, or inherited from an old operating system or installation from long ago.

On Big Sur I tried to mute that flooding message with this workaround:

sudo vi /etc/asl/com.apple.mds 

put your password then insert the following code and save

? [= Sender com.apple.xpc.launchd] [S= Message SIGKILL] claim only
* ignore

then again

sudo killall -HUP syslogd

After that the annoying message disappears.

my two cents

(notice: this will hide every com.apple.xpc.launchd logs containing the word "SIGKILL" )

I've been trying to track down why my MacBookPro9,2 (a 2012 model though mine was built in 2015) is suddenly acting like it has a failing drive — sluggishness, beachballs, etc. As part of my investigations I ran across all the spotlight errors in the system log.

I never believed that the MDS errors were causing the sluggishness — I agree with Steve that they are possibly just a symptom of some other underlying problem, most likely an incompatible app or extension; or even harmless. From other comments, I gather that disabling Spotlight or dragging all your drives into the Privacy window will eventually cause it to stop, though there may be a delay. The big question for those of you who have seen the error messages stop: has this accompanied a cessation of your other problems like overheating, sluggishness, beachballs, etc.?

In my case, I have been using a 1 TB Samsung SSD that was going on five years old and getting full, so I just bought a new 2 TB Samsung SSD, installed a fresh Catalina, and migrated my main user account. So far the new SSD is attached externally so there will definitely be speed issues due to the USB connection. I'm still seeing beachballs and stuff so the next step is to actually install the drive inside the computer and see what happens.

Other troubleshooting steps would be running in safe mode, which, while you won't be able to do everything you normally do, should at least be an indication of whether a third-party extension is causing the problem. If so, the next step would be the entertaining process of deleting everything and adding stuff back in slowly.

Incidentally, I wouldn't necessarily call this a bug and I certainly can't fault Apple for not having an instant solution. As an independent Mac consultant for 25+ years, I saw firsthand the amazing array of weird things people can install on their computers.

If you want assistance, then see my previous suggestion for the OP here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251433748?answerId=252794728022#252794728022

As @Barney-15E mentions the Apple system logs are worthless these days for troubleshooting problems. While I've never seen those errors in any logs before my earlier suggestion may help to locate the app which is causing these errors. You have a software issue and we cannot help without knowing details about your system which the EtreCheck report will show us.

Lol I thought you were kidding with your response. But you are truly clueless.

Opening console or not, those exited process are happening in the background. Those failed tasks belong to Spotlight. It continuously trying to index something but abruptly killed. It keeps trying to index the files every few minutes. It uses several workers that you can check in activity monitor under mdworker name, it can have more than 2 processes. These continuous failed attempts to index the files in the background that drains your battery more.

zeki893, What do you mean by you added document and pictures then your log warnings went away ?

I still have the problems. Only turning Spotlight completely off have helped.

Didn't have it since, stupid because spotlight is nice to have but not like this.

chubb66 wrote:

I have repeatedly asked support regarding the inability to update apps etc. With no luck they seem to only agree with what App Store spits out instead of maybe guiding me in the background to find out why.

Apple will only take notice of the issue when enough users actually show that a clean install of macOS has the same problem. This means testing the Mac before migrating or restoring from a backup and before installing third party apps (or at least minimize the number of third party apps installed to the most widely recognized & used apps which most Mac users will have installed). Then you need to talk to Apple Support and get the issue escalated to an engineer.

FYI, the Apple Store or an Apple Authorized Service Provider will not be able to assist you other than performing a clean install themselves. If they don't see a problem after a clean install, then they typically will close the case (although possibly some AASP's will assist you for troubleshooting third party software issues).

Since a few people have already reported in this thread that a clean install of macOS has these continue "Service Exited" log entries, then it appears to be some sort of macOS bug that only Apple software engineers & developers will be able to address. Those users who have actual performance issues with a clean install (or minimal amount of third party apps) or those concerned about their SSD's write endurance are the best ones to contact Apple to work with their engineers to resolve this issue.

Wild.

I don't think i have Google Drive installed and still have on both my Catalina Macbooks.

I have been here since the early start of this discussion and it goes back to Mojave and High Sierra with some Security Updates and ever since.

I'm not on Big Sur yet but it sounds like it's there too.

I had to disable my Spotlight completely to get this error to stop.

P.S Any easy way to check if i have any Google Drive stuff on my computer ? I don't have the Google Drive app installed now but i did back in time.

But on my other Mac i never installed Google Drive from what i remember so if there is a easy trick to search for it other that a normal search. (I use Find Any File) now when Spotlight is disabled.

@steve626 I think the issue is more nuanced than you are describing.

I have a 2015 MBP and when I look in console, in the last 20 minutes, I've had 10 "Service exited due to SIGKILL" messages that stem from mds.

The reason I found this thread is because a client of mine gave me her 27" iMac 2014 to replace the HDD, which is old and failing, a common occurrence in Macs that are 5+ years old. I replaced the disk, as I've done for dozens of clients just this year alone and hundreds over the last 20 years, and then installed a fresh copy of macOS Catalina and then ran Migration Assistant. The system runs super slow. It has 16 GB of RAM, but memory pressure is around 14 GB in use. The CPU load is almost always at 100% or close to it.

Three separate times, I've erased the new 2 TB SSD and started over. Every time, I get the same result. I've tried Catalina and Big Sur. I've tried Migrating everything; I've tried migrating only the user accounts.

Finally, I've started having a look at the console. Whereas I get about 10 per 20 minutes, this iMac is getting 10-20 such messages per minute. It was getting 4-5 per second before I added all volumes to the Privacy section of the Spotlight preference pane.

So, while I agree that these Service exited due to SIGKILL messages are normal, and do not by themselves indicate a problem, getting an average of one every two minutes is significantly different than getting dozens or hundreds per minute.

I'll be trying another fresh install tonight to see at what point the deluge of messages begins.....

As I wrote, it's a workaround to stop that useless message flooding in the syslog.

In my case this helps me to read the logs without continuing to scroll-skip that stupid message.

With the following filter it seems isolate better, only to "mds SIGKILL" related logs.

? [= Sender com.apple.xpc.launchd] [S= Message SIGKILL | sent by mds] claim only
* ignore

re: Bug Sur 11.6.1

I was getting these messages one per second, for who knows how many months... I never checked until for some still unknown reason my circa 2017 iMac turned off by itself yesterday. I re-started, went to the console log and was appalled to see zillions of these messages.

I'm not sure what mds and mds-stores do.

For several weeks I've noticed a lot of 'flashing' of the light on the Time Machine external drive. I never paid attention to is since I turned off automatic Time Machine backups.

I did a total shutdown and unplugged my Time Machine backup drive and re-started.

Now I get one or two messages per minute, not one per second.

Nov 23 07:35:23 xxxxx com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.10000000-0300-0000-0000-000000000000[843]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[97]

Maybe I have a faulty external drive?

Who knows... time for a new iMac... waiting for the new generation to announce and ship.

It could be a bug in Spotlight as others have said so maybe re-indexing might help... but I doubt it.

To look for other possible software issues run EtreCheck and post the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper.

Are those any different to:

sudo mdutil -E /

From what I can see that just rebuilds the spotlight index for all?