Sequoia 15.2 Spotlight keeps dying after indexing

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32 points

Sequoia 15.2 Spotlight keeps dying after indexing

I just upgraded to Sequoia 15.2 on my M3 MacBook Pro and have never seen this problem before until the upgrade (Note: my INTEL MacBook Pro does not see this problem):

Spotlight server keeps dying after indexing. It's fine during indexing.

Spotlight will start indexing. During indexing I can check that all the indices are alive:

After indexing, Spotlight just dies and gives "No index" and "Spotlight server is disabled"

As you can see, running

mdutil -i on /

Says that the server is disabled.

Trying to restart the server is a failure as well:

I've already

Reinstalled Sequoia 15.2 by booting into "safe mode".
I've already done what BDAqua suggested here Spotlight doesn't find some apps on Mac o… - Apple Community in his Nov 19 post where he suggested "/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user" etc.
Since the Spotlight server is dead, toggling Applications checkbox in System Settings->Spotlight does nothing.

Here's my EtreCheck report to see if people can spot anything that's killing Spotlight indexing.

EtreCheck report

The only solution at this time is to do a reboot. Very annoying!

Thanks!

cytan

MacBook Pro (M3 Max, 2023)

Posted on Dec 13, 2024 5:34 PM

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Answer 1

cytan Author

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32 points

Dec 13, 2024 6:25 PM in response to cytan

Hmmm, I did not reboot but continued working. And after 1.5 hours, I checked spotlight and it's back alive???!!!!

This is still very weird behaviour! Note the time stamps when I ran EtreCheck (i.e. Spotlight is dead) and then when it's alive.

Any pointers as to why the server suddenly resurrected itself? And why is this happening?

cytan

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Answer 2

cytan Author

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32 points

Dec 13, 2024 6:29 PM in response to cytan

I spoke too soon, it just died *again* in about 15 min (or less):

It's trying to resurrect, but it keeps dying. It's deja vu all over again!

cytan

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Answer 3

cytan Author

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32 points

Dec 14, 2024 5:09 PM in response to cytan

Well, the thread that keeps dying is mds_stores.

Besides deleting

/System/Volumes/Data/.Spotlight_V100

and

~/Library/MetaData/CoreSpotlight

to restart the mds_stores thread, is there any other way of restarting it so that re-indexing is avoided?

Thanks!

cytan

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Answer 4

Top-ranking reply

cytan Author

Level 1

32 points

Dec 15, 2024 2:46 AM in response to cytan

I found the source of the problem! It's my TimeMachine backup disk.

When I unmount this disk, Spotlight does not crash at all after indexing.

However, when I mount my Backup_M3 disk back, Spotlight starts indexing and crashes *after* TimeMachine finishes its backup!

This sounds like a bug in Sequoia 15.2. How do I file a bug report?

cytan

P.S. I did a Disk Utility->First Aid on this disk to see if there are errors. Disk Utility says that it's in perfect health, so it's not the disk.

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Answer 5

cytan Author

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32 points

Dec 15, 2024 4:27 PM in response to cytan

I decided to reformat the backup disk and encrypted it *despite* the disk having passed the Disk Utility->First Aid check. This time after a TimeMachine backup, mds_stores did not crash and SpotLight does see the apps in the Applications folder.

I think this is a bug that Apple should fix. A possibly bad (in my case, it is *not* bad) attached drive should not crash SpotLight. I'll be filing a bug report.

cytan

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Answer 6

cytan Author

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32 points

Dec 15, 2024 5:46 PM in response to cytan

Unfortunately, Spotlight died again after I disconnected and reconnected my Backup drive to do a backup. So, there's something really messed up with Spotlight and the the indexing of my Backup drive.

cytan

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Answer 7

cytan Author

Level 1

32 points

Dec 16, 2024 12:20 AM in response to cytan

Bug report to Apple has been submitted. The gist of what I submitted was that SpotLight should not die but stop indexing any possible flakey drives and simply log the problem. IMO, SpotLight death can't be any of its options!

cytan

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Answer 8

cytan Author

Level 1

32 points

Dec 16, 2024 12:21 AM in response to cytan

Changed USB cable. Maybe that's the fix for this drive. Seems to be ok so far. But this problem may rear its ugly head later.

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Answer 9

lsooty

Level 1

14 points

Jan 26, 2025 5:24 AM in response to cytan

Seqoila destroyed spotlight search in Finder and Outlook for imac.

ive had 4 Apple senior advisers over a week, reinstalled everything , 7 days of total frustration.

Absolutley disgusting and destroying businesses.

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Answer 10

cytan Author

Level 1

32 points

Jan 27, 2025 12:00 AM in response to lsooty

I hope you were able to find a solution. Was it fixed?

As for myself, I moved the TimeMachine Drive to a NAS drive and Spotlight is more reliable than before. BUT the death of Spotlight still happens after my MacBook Pro has been up for about 1 week. Doing the usual mdutils -i on / and/or deleting the Spotlight data folders seem to fix it for a few hours after it starts misbehaving.

And don't get me started on Universal Control which dies often until I found the solution.

IMO, Sequoia is really, really buggy and should not have been pushed out the door by Apple.

cyta

cytan

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Answer 11

Jan 31, 2025 8:26 AM in response to cytan

I had the exact same problem as you. The problem for me was one of my portable harddrives that was plugged in was causing the spotlight to crash. The fix for me was to move all the stuff to another harddrive and then erase the problem drive and then move everything back. Now when the mac is shutdown or put to sleep and turned back on the spotlight still works.

Maybe worth erasing some of your Volumes and seeing in Disk utilities and see if that helps maybe

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Answer 12

Feb 13, 2025 8:59 AM in response to cytan

Running though the same problems. It's a nightmare, you never know when Spotlight may work or not.

I also have the 'association' with the Time Machine backups, like cytan found.

I am still on Sonoma (just reinstalled 14.7.4 yesterday - with no solution).

I've trashed the backups to generate them anew, that did not help (that was under 14.7.3).

I attach the Terminal output I took in a moment Spotlight just had crashed (it did after:

I had made a backup, then ejected that disk; Spotlight worked.
I had to search a file, used finder for it, since it was a system-file, thus including system-files into the search
I did not know if the file is hidden, so I added to the search the 'File visibility' and 'Visible or Invisible' qualifiers
that was the moment Spotlight crashed (else it does some time after a backup disk was ejected)
then I took the 'mdutil -as' readings

You can see >1 occurrences of crashing Spotlight (it started itself in between).

Very annoying!!!

Interestingly, sometimes the 'mdutil -as' gives no output at all. And sometimes there's a stall after it, just several seconds after "/:" until the next output 'No index.'

Maybe helpful for someone?

Only on the first occurrence I got this: "Error: unexpected indexing state. kMDConfigSearchLevelTransitioning"

Whatever this means.

terminal

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Answer 13

Feb 17, 2025 1:28 AM in response to cytan

Having the same problems (Spotlight amnesia) and went through all suggested solutions without success.

What seems to have helped now is to take Migration Assistant and import only the user data from my external Time Machine backup volume (external disk). Migration Assistant will ask to give that user a new Username.

Within this new user, all seems to be fine.

Found this solution by korr44 here.

I had done without success:

Stopping/deleting index/restarting Spotlight in Terminal
BDAqua suggestion (lsregister commands)
Christoph_Louven suggestion (everything was fine with Volume Owner status)
making new Time Machine backups from scratch
decreased the initial Time Machine backup size as suggested
using only the password to log in, not Touch ID (made a difference initially/sometimes, but was not the final culprit)

Though, have not yet dared to connect the Time Machine backup volume again ... and not used Touch ID ...

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