Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[98]

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Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[98]

Some background - I've seen this topic asked before.......I've had this going on since upgrading my MBP 2014 to Big Sur which was migrated from my 2011 MBP running High Sierra. Di all this last week, spent most of the weekend trying to stop SIGKILL. 2014 machine was running hot and fan going full on when I use reasonably CPU intensive Apps nothing crazy say 50%..

So I starting digging & also chatted to Apple support and spoken to Apple support. I've done everything bar going back down to a previous OSX.

I get this in Console on repeat at times every second. Sometimes nothing for a bit then it comes back.

com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.mdworker.shared.09000000-0400-0000-0000-000000000000[723]): Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[98]

Reading around this is todo with Spotlight. I don't use Spotlight I don't want Spotlight and every OSX before I could run something such as

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

in Terminal to disable it entirely (disabling SIP beforehand.)

This doesn't appear to work on Big Sur. There is a message which I can pass on if anyone answers this?

All the basic, reindexing, rebuilding, reinstalling Apple advised has not worked. I do have some other conflicts/errors showing in console as well but think the are unrelated.

How do I stop this? I'm more than happy to lose Spotlight or some of Spotlights functionally if required. I don't use Spotlight, I don't like Spotlight, I want to be free from the Spotlight.

Be grand to have some input, going slightly mad.

Cheers all

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.7

Posted on Sep 24, 2022 12:42 PM

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Answer 1

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ns10 Author

Level 1

5 points

Sep 25, 2022 8:30 AM in response to ns10

Hi HWTech.

Thanks for your time reading & replying.

Before reading your message I think I cracked it thanks to a comment buried in this 2020 Mac Rumours thread.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/spotlight-mdworker-shared-file-flooding-system-log-removal-stops-search-index-from-working-properly.2248163/

There where certain Terminal commands which worked, then after logout/in & reboots it came back.

BUT think what finally did it for me was this comment --

excluding ~/Library folder in spotlight.

So I went to system preference - spotlight - privacy then dragged n dropped my user library into the pane, quit then restated the machine. I was tired and as you mentioned going slightly mad exposed to system log, so not 100% sure but think that did it and now don't want to mess with anything unless it goes crazy again, me included. I want to use the machine now:)

Why I'm not 100% is for good measure I added all; library folders, Picture folder (more indexing), Public, Music, Movies, Downloads, dropbox and private var (only comes up as an alias), iCloud sure you can see where I'm going. On the Spotlight search results tab I have only my Documents folder ticked. Then I did various rebuilds, reboots, disk repair, SMC, NVRAM, all of which I did before to try to sort this but to no avail. However this time I haven't seen the dreaded "Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[98]" for ages. Some SIGKILLs of course but not that one and no longer the constant stream. The temperature and thus the fan spin is now more normal. Before I could cook my dinner where the MBP had been running an Ableton session (not a large one and not running for long) and warm my hands by touching the casing.

On my Spotlight Odyssey, no-one mentioned using Apple Diagnostics, thanks for that, logged in the grey matter now.

Total take your advice and will ignore Console for now. There is all sorts there and obsession was getting the better of me. I will have a go with EtreCheck now I've dived deeper, thanks for heads up. However as things have calmed down for me there's no point in posting any results I think?

I've been a Mac user for years but this is my first post. Really good to know the support network exist. It takes time which is a precious thing, so thanks to all who do.

As new here not sure posting this will mark it as resolved ?

Cheers ns10

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Answer 2

HWTech

Level 9

68,228 points

Sep 24, 2022 7:04 PM in response to ns10

That SIGKILL entry is unfortunately a "feature" of macOS. A few years ago a well respected forum contributor confirmed the entries appeared with a clean install of macOS (no third party apps installed, nor was the system restored/migrated from a backup).

FYI, just ignore all of the macOS system logs these days as they are completely worthless for troubleshooting system issues. The logs are full of repeating messages making it hard to see anything of importance. Plus the logs contain very cryptic scary messages meant only for the developers as they are mostly log entries for debugging which really should not be present on a fully released product. In addition, Apple has begun sanitizing the logs so if even if they should contain useful information, the information has been censored for security reasons. You will just go insane trying to make sense of these logs. The only exception is a Kernel Panic log can sometimes be useful for figuring out why a Mac has an unexpected shutdown, but even the Kernel Panic logs are becoming unintelligible.

To look for possible software issues causing the system performance issues run EtreCheck and post the report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper. Forum contributors will examine the report to help look for possible issues.

It never hurts to run the Apple Diagnostics to see if any hardware issues are detected.

You should also try disconnecting all external devices in case one of them is causing a problem.

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Service exited due to SIGKILL | sent by mds[98]

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