Continuous 'Service Exited in system log

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.

Thank you for not reading and not posting helpful replies.

No one said that logging events is a problem. Neither is logging the cause of the problem.

And yes, in this case it is a symptom that something must be fixed.

But hey, it's OK if you don't open the console or look at the log files. That's your way of ignoring things happening.

For my part, i would really appreciate getting shown a way to find out why the **** mds is killing these mdworkers.

That's your way of ignoring things happening.

Nothing is happening to my Mac. I do get some of those messages in the logs, but there is no adverse affect on my Mac.

Focusing on the log entries won't provide any solution. You may be able to find a way to stop it logging those entries, but it won't fix whatever underlying problem you have.

Since I don't have whatever is installed that causes the errors with Spotlight, I have little way of knowing what it might be. You must determine what you have installed that is causing the underlying problems. There is really no way for any of us who do not suffer from the actual problem finding the solution for you. But, we do know that the symptoms are not the cause.

If you go back and look at the original post to which I replied, there is no implication that there is any other problem. It's only a bunch of log entries. I have many of those entries, also, but I have no other problems.

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.

Just ignore this helpful Barney-15E guy.

By the way, I have done a clean install of Big Sur on my MBP 2017, the issue still appears persistently as soon as the clean install finished (without installing any new apps). I did it after wiping the disk. So this is issue is really weird, haven’t had any working solution yet for me.

johndoo_helo wrote:

Just ignore this helpful Barney-15E guy.

By the way, I have done a clean install of Big Sur on my MBP 2017, the issue still appears persistently as soon as the clean install finished (without installing any new apps). I did it after wiping the disk. So this is issue is really weird, haven’t had any working solution yet for me.

What is "the issue" for your situation? Is the computer working ok but you still see the SIGKILL messages? I saw the SIGKILL messages on a brand new Mac.

If you see the SIGKILL messages but the computer runs fine after a disk wipe and clean install, I'd move on and not worry about or be distracted by those SIGKILLs. If your computer is running poorly even after the disk wipe and clean install (fans high, overheating, beach balls ...) then there could be a hardware issue. (What else could it be?)

The issue of this mds sigkill that I think it affects my performance.

I notice a little bit of lag (unresponsiveness for 1-2 seconds) periodically. I think it happens every time these mds workers start to work and get killed. And the most noticeable one is the decrease of my battery life (or this is just big sur?? But it’s around 60% of previous performance).

I thought the same that I could have a hardware issue because clean install didn’t help.

Hi. I got the same bug on my new iMac. Only a few weeks of use and this BS pops up in my console and everywhere. Any tips from anyone on how to literally delete this thing!?

Im getting beach balls in every single Apple program, especially finder. It is embarrassing to open anything that is an Apple program on this glorious machine because of how extremely slow the programs are. It might be something wrong with the fusion drive but I have barely messed around with storage options, backups, etc.

I have the iMac 27' 2019 (i5 hexa-core 3,6Ghz - 5Ghz, 16gb ram, Radeon RX580/Radeon Pro 580X, 2tb fusion drive)

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.

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.

I am one of the people who has been reporting that this SIGKILL message is seen in the system logs on two different MacBook Pros on 10.15.7 (one is a 2017 model the other a 2019 model), although I could not discern any negative impacts on performance. SO I wasn't worried about it, but have been following the complaints in this forum.

I looked at this more closely and it appears that on my laptops these SIGKILL messages appear every second for a minute or two, and then stop coming in for anywhere from 30 seconds to quite a few minutes when there are no such SIGKILL messages. Then they reappear and seem to stop coming in as fast as they reappeared. Would not have even noticed this if not for this thread. Also noticed some noise from fans for a few minutes on one laptop but was doing other things on the laptop then and also the fans sped up during the period when SIGKILL log entries were NOT present.

Cause and effect here might be tricky to unravel, and this sort of thing might be very system dependent (e.g. what has been installed, or even the model of computer). By the way, my two laptops are very different MacBook Pros, one from 2017, one from 2019, and the 2017 is an employer provided one that has a managed system that requires a smart card to log in to and includes central monitoring and maintenance and even has (mandatory, I can't even remove or change this) an enterprise Symantec Antivirus installation plus Big Fix and other central oversight. The other laptop is a personal one that is very "clean" and has MS-Office but not a whole lot else installed, no background software or kexts. Yet they seem similar with respect to this SIGKILL "feature." I am wondering if it is a normal behavior for the Mac OS and for those who see beachballs and slowdowns, that might be a normally well behaved process getting hung up somehow.

These processes can be closed because the particular mdimporter they apply can't be found or opened. For diagnostic purposes the system log message are almost useless. Running fs_usage and searching for events at the reported times doesn't show any pattern of events. Tinkering to get more information or adding links if mdworker is looking in the wrong place requires disabling SIP.

The duration of the spawned process execution is too short to capture Open Files and Ports in the Activity Monitor manually, yet long enough to see which makes you wonder if it's volume/container sensitive (lacking permissions).

It'd be nice if the system log messages process opening and closing could be disabled, better still selectively. The criticality from end users commenting here appears to be concern from system log message volume, potentially worry over shortening SDD Flash lifetime while there's evidence a lot of logging volume has otherwise been reduced over earlier macOS releases (and we see a lot of message still from to be deprecated calls).

Forensics might be applied with a small volume not blocked from being scanned Spotlight -> Privacy. It may be possible to ascertain behaviorally by Spotlight Search what's failing or if all the mdimporters are not being applied. From an end user's perspective we don't see complaints of things missing from Spotlight Search results.

End user concern about SDD Flash life time comes from the otherwise product useful lifetime being limited by support from Apple (who appear uncaring from the comments here). These on board non-replaceable SDD based M1 Macbooks are limited by SDD lifetime, the batteries can be replaced. As consumers we've seen the effects of life time, DVD players that forget language choice and where to resume play, routers that fail from system logs continuously stored in Flash memory, etc. There's been recent reports of automobiles being limited by Flash lifetime, and it's not possible to limit the useful lifetime of luxury or super cars by failed electronic components. I had an acquaintance, a PCB board designer who designed and sold replacement electronic subsystems for Ferrari's a decade or so ago. Automotive electronic design reliability standards were already evolving.

One could hope system log message volume comes from macOS release testing carelessness and not an evil intention to foreshorten SDD Flash life to match product cycles (first taste is free, we can see long term product planning in Apple switching to their own silicon taking around a decade). The choice to make the SDD non-replaceable would have likely been driven by battery capacity.

I definitely have all of what they are describing up there, the continuous barrage of spotlight running, beachballs,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. I mean this is the first Mac I have owned, and essentially just began using my Mac more than 2 times a year. So any helpful advice would be great and much appreciated.

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.

Thank you Mr HW Tech

I greatly appreciate your advice and quick response, sorry it has taken me so ,long to get back to the community and to this topic. Yes sir I had no prior experience with apple's way of life and customer support as well as the clandestine operations of keeping guard of their proprietary operating systems. I respect that as a customer and a novice iMac operator. My first phone call to apple support was so complex I'm assuming, they passed me to an engineer. So I will definitely look to that in the future for oddities or continuously running programs. I learned on a hand built slapped together PC with windows XP 2000 professional edition. 🤣 I was use to the extensive detail in the help/support windows. so essentially I went from that when they booted service directly to iMac 2014 Retina 5K. I was definitely shocked by the difference and not expecting that.

But I am constantly coming upon with and finding questions and roadblocks so hopefully y'all can bear with my dumb questions. Thank you again for your concern.