Weird Console errors when running Verify Disk

Question

Weird Console errors when running Verify Disk

Hi everyone,

I found some odd messages in Console whenever I run Verify Disk (I'm trying to troubleshoot another issue, so I ran Disk Utility and that's when I noticed this issue).

4/3/11 5:35:17 PM mds[38] (Error) LSOF: File '/private/var/run/utmpx' (fd=4) left open on device 234881026
4/3/11 5:35:17 PM mds[38] (Error) LSOF: File '/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Versions/A/Resources/tokru leLE.data' (fd=7) left open on device 234881026
4/3/11 5:35:17 PM mds[38] (Error) LSOF: File '/' (fd=9) left open on device 234881026
4/3/11 5:35:17 PM mds[38] (Error) LSOF: File '/usr/share/langid/langid.inv' (fd=26) left open on device 234881026

Any idea what these messages mean? What is device 234881026?

Running "lsof" in Terminal finds no device by that number. So, I'm kinda clueless. Running Verify Disk does come back successful with the disk appearing to be ok.

17" MBP, 2.53GHz Core i5, 128GB SSD, 8GB RAM, Anti-glare., Mac OS X (10.6.7), 32GB iPhone 3GS White, 16GB iPod Touch, 2G 1GB iPod Shuffle, 4G 20GB iPod

Posted on Apr 3, 2011 2:56 PM

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Answer 1

TildeBee

Level 7

31,917 points

Apr 3, 2011 6:17 PM in response to William Brawley

William --

What does it say at the end of "Verify Disk?"
If it says the system passed, then I wouldn't worry about anything.
Notations in the Console are very hard to understand unless you're a serious IT guy.

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Answer 2

Apr 3, 2011 6:19 PM in response to TildeBee

Verify Disk passed a-ok. Probably nothing to worry about, but since it says "error", it got me concerned.

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Answer 3

TildeBee

Level 7

31,917 points

Apr 3, 2011 7:05 PM in response to William Brawley

Just so you know, I used to try to "read" the Console messages too.
It's a great way to get ulcers.
They're not meant for us everyday users to understand.

"Passed," I understand.
LOL.

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Answer 4

J^T

Level 1

17 points

Aug 22, 2011 6:06 PM in response to William Brawley

Old thread, I know, but just in case anyone cares....

This message indicates the Spotlight process that builds its search index noticed that it lost access to a disk that it was indexing files from. This happens in this case when Disk Utility takes temporary exclusive control of a disk to verify it.

If you want the full geek translation, it's, for the first line you quoted: On date 4/3/11 at time 5:35:17 PM the process named mds, process ID 38, logged the following: listing of open files reveled that the file named '/private/var/run/utmpx', on file descriptor 4, was left open on device 234881026.

If you aren't a developer debugging Spotlight metadata importers, you really don't care.

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Answer 5

TildeBee

Level 7

31,917 points

Aug 22, 2011 6:33 PM in response to J^T

Thanks, J^T --

Good to have that input!

😎

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