What is AddressBookSourceSync?

I observe since a couple of days (perhaps since I upgraded to 1.7.2.?) that "AddressBookSourceSync" eats up my 8 GB iMac memory until the machine comes to a full stop.

Only terminating this in Activity Monitor helps. But a couple of minutes later this devil comes up again.

What is it? Where does it come from? Does it have something to do with iCloud sync?

Thanks a lot.

Best regards

Marian

For those who want to do the experience :

1. Open Activity Monitor on the side
2. Open Mail
3. From any mail that select the sender email adress
   1. You can add this email adress to the adress book
   2. Then you can go straight tho this entry in the adress book
   3. While you modify or add something in this entry…
4. See in the Activity Monitor
   1. AddressBookSourceSync appears generally going insane
   2. Then comes Mail and it won't take long for mail to become red
   3. You then are stuck with a frowen Mail app !

It might last for some second or sometime forever…!

You just have to quit hard way the Mail app.

Just to add another data point to the conversation, like a lot of people (or so it now turns out), I’ve been having this problem on a recurring basis ever since I first started using Lion, and continuing now on Mountain Lion.

I’d worked out that AddressBookSourceSync was the offending process: it would run until it consumed all possible RAM (my MBP has 8GB and it would happily consume nearly all of that), and grind everything else on the computer to a standstill.

For a while now I’ve been “solving” the problem by removing executable permissions from the program, as follows:

sudo chmod a-x /System/Library/Frameworks/AddressBook.framework/Versions/A/Resources/AddressBo okSourceSync.app/Contents/MacOS/AddressBookSouthceSync

This “works”, in that AddressBookSourceSync can no longer run and so the problem stops coming back for a while, but any time I run an OSX update or a disk permissions repair, the custom permissions are reverted and the problem comes back.

And, sure enough, after applying the 10.8.2 update last night, the problem indeed came back again — it’s nice to see that even now, there’s no real fix for this from Apple — and was so bad that within ~20 minutes of rebooting, AddressBookSourceSync had consumed all available memory and brought the computer to a grinding halt (clock stopped, couldn’t move the mouse cursor, eventually even the caps lock key stopped responding) and I had to do a hard reboot.

When this happened three times in a row, I finally thought to search for it, and found this discussion. And sure enough, Isday’s procedure resolved it. THANK YOU ISDAY!

For posterity, here’s how I fixed it & proved that it remained fixed:

1. Booted to single-user mode (I’m a Unix dork, this sort of approach appeals to me, modify as you wish).
2. Moved /Users/me/Library/Application Support/AddressBook to /Users/me/Library/Application Support/AddressBook.MOVED
3. Copied the Configuration.plist file from the AddressBook.MOVED folder to the new, empty AddressBook folder.
4. Rebooted, then immediately began monitoring Activity Monitor & top output (cf again, Unix dork).
5. Went to System Preferences → iCloud, saw that Contacts had been deselected, so I checked it off again.
6. Went back to Activity Monitor & Terminal, and noted that AddressBookSourceSync started running again, but never consumed more than about 250MB of RAM.
7. Examined the new AddressBook folder, which fairly quickly grew from empty (plus the Configuration.plist file) to around 30MB, where it stabilized. (The old version of the folder was around 200MB; I haven’t bothered working out the relevant differences.)
8. Went to Contacts, made some random changes (de-duped records), just to force a resync to iCloud. Again, AddressBookSourceSync started back up but the memory consumption never spiked like it was doing before.
9. Went to System Preferences → Mail, Contacts & Calendars, and enabled the new Facebook integration. I used the “Update Profile Photos” option to have it update my contacts from my Facebook friends list. Again, AddressBookSourceSync fired off and the AddressBook folder started growing again (eventually plateauing around 53MB), but the memory consumption hovered between 100MB & 200MB, which is totally reasonable.

It’s so nice to finally have a resolution for this! Thank again, Isday!

Since I posted 4 hour ago. I did notice that I was still logged into mobileme, even though it was already updated to icloud. I signed out four hours aog and so far no problem yet? Anyone else still logged in to mobile me? Just trying to solve the mystery.

Robert

Had the same problem of Address Book / AddressBookSync run wild after upgrading to 10.7.2 and icloud, and this is what I did which seems to have fixed it.

1. Made sure that mobileme was not syncing anymore (system preferences)by logging out of MobileMe.

2. As a precaution, backed up my address book (1700 contacts) locally, and quit address book.

3. Checked to see if icloud had all of my contacts. www.icloud.com

4. Made sure that AddressBookSync was not running in Activity monitor. If it is, kill it.

5. Went into my users library (~/Library/Application Support/Address Book/) trashed everything EXCEPT Confguration.plist.

6. Went back into System preferences/icloud and made sure that Contacts was checked off. Once checked the sync started.

I believe you may be looking in the wrong "Library". You need to look in your User Library not the one listed if you just select you Mac HD. From the finder menu bar hold down the "Option" key and select "Go". You should see "Library" appear. Select it. From there select /Application Support and now you should see /Address Book.

hey techies. I cannot find the AddressBook in my Applications Support folder to delete the files LSDAY recommends deleting. Help!

What do i do next. This AddressSourceSynch is crashing my whole MBP.

do you know this......in the Finder, go to the GO menu......then hold OPTION and you will see the "LIBRARY" for the current user, from there do what the instruction say. See pic below.

Delete everything in the folder except the "configuration.plist" file. Keep following the directions, your problem will be solved. Hope this helps.

Hi Alexandragold, you should look for the library folder depending on the user folder to complete last Isday step to clean the sub-folder. I just did it and I hope it works. Using up-to-date Mavericks and having the same issue!! 😮

I'm having the exact same problem and it began after I moved from mobileme to icloud today. Every time I open address book or mail it launches ""AddressBookSourceSync" and over the course of a few minutes it gobbles up all system real and virtual memory until the maching crashes. Someone at Apple PLEASE weigh in and tell us how to fix!!!!

Me too. Began when I bought at new MacBookPro 13 inch with Lion and transferred my stuff with Migration Assistant. Addressbooksourcesync pops up from time to time and refuses to go away until I put in my keychain password. Was hoping it would be fixed with the big download a couple nights ago. Not so lucky. Hope they fix it soon, it's annoying.

I noticed that AddressBookSourceSync starts its memory eating activities in the moment I check Contacts in iCloud Sync. When I uncheck Contacts there, AddressBookSourceSync terminates.

If my observation is right, then Apple does have a serious issue with iCloud Sync of Contacts. With this error it is simply not possible to work with a MAC while iCloud is switched on. Give AddressBookSourceSync some time and it turns your Mac into a crawling turtle and finally freezes completely. Reason is that this task eats up your memory step by step until it occupies it entirely.

I migrated from me.com to iCloud four days ago and have the same issues. I can watch the activity monitor - AddressBookSourceSync will go from 15% to 89% to 20% and so on. I have about 1500 contacts (not sure if this is a problem that occurs with users having lots of contacts.) It consumes so much CPU capacity that the entire MacBook chassis heats up until it's almost too hot to rest comfortably on my lap.

I have turned off Address sync and the issue seems to have resolved itself. I am hoping that Apple sends some sort of notification of a fix, so that I'll know to turn it back on at some point in the future.

I observe three obviously related issues which are keeping me away from a proper work on my iMac:

1. Once migrated from MobileMe to iCloud and sync of contacts checked on, the task "AddressBookSourceSync" creeps into the task list and eats up the entire memory of my iMac within a couple of minutes. The only cure is to kill the task in Activity Monitor.

2. Done this, I opened Address Book. This behaves exactly the same. I see the task Address Book in Activitry Monitor but no more AddressBookSourceSync. However, the behavior is the same: Addressbook eats all memory. I have to kill it before the iMac crashes.

3. Now, I want to uncheck contacts sync in System Prefs. Doing so, I get asked if I want to keep a copy of my iCloud contacts on my iMac. If I choose Keep Contacts, System Prefs freezes, cannot be closed anymore; monitoring it shows the exact same memory eating behavior. Only killing the task in Activity Monitor gets you out here.

So, How do I get out here? It seems impossible to switch off contacts sync in iCloud. The only way I found out is, to coose "Delete from Mac" when you get asked in Sys Prefs when you uncheck Contacts. Result is: an empty Address Book - which was not a drama in my case, because I had a backup.

Quintessence: Here is a serious problem and I hope more voices raise here so that Apple is hearing us.