I/O errors (5 min beachballs) when spotlight enabled/indexing.

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Level 1

35 points

I/O errors (5 min beachballs) when spotlight enabled/indexing.

All of a sudden I started getting sprinning beachballs for about five minutes at a time. These correlated with i/o errors in the console. I ran diskwarrior, thinking I was having a disk problem, but it found no errors. Same with diskutil and fsck_hfs. I noticed that spotlight was indexing all of a sudden - so i disabled it at the command line using 'mdutil -i off /' after which the errors and beachballs ceased. Turning it back on brings the errors back. I would like to have spotlight running, so I'd like to know why this might happen and how to correct it. I have also tried clearing the index using 'mdutil -E /' Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Mac OS X 10.6.8

MacBook Pro - 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

Posted on Jan 19, 2012 3:40 PM

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Answer 1

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Jan 19, 2012 10:21 PM in response to Matt Jacoby

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/sbbod.html

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Answer 2

Matt Jacoby Author

Level 1

35 points

Jan 19, 2012 10:42 PM in response to baltwo

Thanks, baltwo, but I already have a strong idea what is giving me the sbbod, but not why. I also found the solution detailed above (disabling indexing) but would like to know why that works and how to resolve it permanently. Thanks for the effort, though.

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Answer 3

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Jan 19, 2012 10:54 PM in response to Matt Jacoby

It's obvious that indexing is screwing things up. That's what you need to fix. There are many steps in that linked document for you to try. Delete the index and start over, reinstall the latest COMBO update, and reinstall Lion are just a few that come to mind. FWIW, I've not had any indexing issues since April when I started beta-testing this poor excuse for an OS and that's with two ext HDs connected.

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Answer 4

Matt Jacoby Author

Level 1

35 points

Jan 20, 2012 8:25 AM in response to baltwo

I'm not running Lion, but I could try re-installing Snow Leopard, though I'd like to avoid it for now. Seems like the kind of thing where I should be able to flush the spotlight system and start over. I thought that's what 'mdutil -E' would do. Would it be fruitful to directly delete the spotlight index via CLI?

p.s. -- I didn't see anything on that page pertaining to spotlight or indexing - I must be missing it.

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Answer 5

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Jan 20, 2012 10:55 AM in response to Matt Jacoby

Sorry, Lion was a mistype. I meant Snow Leopard. Why avoid it? Should only take 10-15 minutes and it replaces all OS components, leaving everything else in place. Yes, if mdutil -E didn't do the trick, manually delete the hidden .Spotlight-V100 folder and start over. Finally, the SBBOD page addresses common cause for it, not anything directly related to Spotlight.

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Answer 6

Matt Jacoby Author

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35 points

Jan 20, 2012 12:00 PM in response to baltwo

Okay, thanks for the advice, baltwo. I'll try manual deletion and see where that gets me.

Best,

Matt

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Answer 7

Matt Jacoby Author

Level 1

35 points

Jan 20, 2012 4:56 PM in response to baltwo

Manually deleting the spotlight index did not work. Once I re-instated indexing, I started getting hangs and i/o errors. I still do not know why spotlight is causing this problem, so I will have to live without spotlight (not easy!) until I have the opportunity to re-install (likely, after I am done with my current project).

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Answer 8

baltwo

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62,362 points

Jan 20, 2012 5:02 PM in response to Matt Jacoby

Since there's no simple Spotlight collection of things on the machine, reinstalling is the only thing I think will solve the issue.

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Answer 9

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jan 20, 2012 5:34 PM in response to Matt Jacoby

If a reinstall doesn't help, there's probably a corrupted file (or files) making mds choke.

Since Disk Utiltity didn't find it, you'd have to exclude pretty much everything via System Prefs > Spotlight > Privacy, then remove exclusions one at a time until you find it.

An easier way, oddly enough, would be to try making a backup with Time Machine. Unlike most backup apps, TM indexes everything it backs-up, also using mds, so it should find the problem. When it does, the backup sends a message to the system log naming the file, and (usually) fails. No guarantee, of course, but might be worth a shot.

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Answer 10

Aug 1, 2012 10:58 AM in response to baltwo

Did you ever find a solution to this issue?

I believe I am experiencing the same problem and think it might be time to reinstall from scratch but wondering if you figured out another solution since you last posted?

Same symptoms, disk utility showing no problems with drive but when spotlight is indexing I'm getting I/O error on primary drive every few minutes and it locks up everything but the cursor for 30-90 seconds or sometimes more. I disabled Spotlight on everything and no more I/O errors.

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