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10.8.2 spotlight indexing issue

Since updating to 10.8.2 I noticed that spotlight will randomly start indexing for a while and then stop. Basically everything IS already indexed because when I search in spotlight I got what I need but from time to time there will be indexing progress bar in the bottum of the spotlight dropdown menu, which is full but keeps rolling. I checked console.app and saw a lot of messages regarding mdworker, mdimporter and lsboxd like the following:


mdworker: Unable to talk to lsboxd

mdimporter: Unable to talk to lsboxd

sandboxd: mdworker(692) deny mach-lookup com.apple.ls.boxd


I suspect that there might be some issue with spotlight and the sandbox mechanism? When I boot the computer I also notice that lsboxd keeps running in activity monitor, which wasn't the case prior to 10.8.2 update.


Has anyone seen the same symptom?


I'm on a mid-2010 MacBook Pro with Crucial M4 SSD.

OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Sep 19, 2012 8:28 PM

Reply
53 replies

Sep 20, 2012 4:33 AM in response to jianglai

Yeah, seeing same issue. Unfortunately mds and mdworker get to consuiming a lot of CPU during these little games. Somehow I doubt I'm going to be seeing the battery life improvements that are supposed to have come with 10.8.2. I sure wish Apple actually *tested* this software before releasing it to the world... I'm going to send in a bug report with log excerpts and maybe a partial dump of my spotlight indexes.

Sep 20, 2012 8:22 AM in response to Adrian Robert

I have got the same problem here. Mdworker and Mds take up between 40% and 60% of my CPU resources. Excluding all drives from Spotlight does not make a difference. Neither does reindexing.



According to some other threads it has some thing to do with sandboxing:


mdworker[299]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

sandboxd[296] ([299]): mdworker(299) deny mach-lookup com.apple.ls.boxd

kernel[0]: Sandbox: sandboxd(314) deny mach-lookup com.apple.coresymbolicationd


Lets hope Apple releases a fix soon.

Sep 21, 2012 11:32 AM in response to jianglai

I'm having the same issue since upgrading. Having the spinning beach ball of death up no matter what activity I'm doing, my iMac is essentially unusable right now.


2012-09-21 2:22:31.486 PM mdworker[4233]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

2012-09-21 2:22:31.542 PM sandboxd[4239]: ([4233]) mdworker(4233) deny mach-lookup com.apple.ls.boxd

2012-09-21 2:22:31.000 PM kernel[0]: Sandbox: sandboxd(4239) deny mach-lookup com.apple.coresymbolicationd

2012-09-21 2:26:45.153 PM mdworker[4247]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

2012-09-21 2:26:45.219 PM sandboxd[4252]: ([4247]) mdworker(4247) deny mach-lookup com.apple.ls.boxd

2012-09-21 2:26:45.000 PM kernel[0]: Sandbox: sandboxd(4252) deny mach-lookup com.apple.coresymbolicationd

2012-09-21 2:26:55.005 PM rpc.statd[25]: Failed to contact rpc.statd at host 192.168.2.102

2012-09-21 2:28:51.869 PM mdworker[4256]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

2012-09-21 2:28:51.948 PM sandboxd[4262]: ([4256]) mdworker(4256) deny mach-lookup com.apple.ls.boxd

2012-09-21 2:28:52.000 PM kernel[0]: Sandbox: sandboxd(4262) deny mach-lookup com.apple.coresymbolicationd

2012-09-21 2:30:53.667 PM mdworker[4270]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

2012-09-21 2:30:53.000 PM kernel[0]: Sandbox: sandboxd(4275) deny mach-lookup com.apple.coresymbolicationd

Sep 21, 2012 11:42 AM in response to Bloedman

I've forced reindex of spotlight using the terminal command

sudo mdutil -E /

Beware: start this at night as it takes a lot of ressources and run for many hours.


Computer speed is normal again.

But still get a lot of these messages in Console:


2012-09-21 14:37:54,691 mdworker[5689]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

2012-09-21 14:37:54,816 sandboxd[5691]: ([5690]) mdworker(5690) deny mach-lookup com.apple.ls.boxd

2012-09-21 14:37:55,000 kernel[0]: Sandbox: sandboxd(5691) deny mach-lookup com.apple.coresymbolicationd

Sep 23, 2012 7:09 PM in response to kpagchen

Thank you for the suggestion but it had no effect. Barely a third of my hd is used, cpu are a fraction of a percent, more than half my ram is free and yet the computer is not in a functional state.


I'm at the end of my rope with this. None of the suggestions that users are making are fixing my problem.


Where the $%^^ is Apple? It's not just me, a lot of other people are having the same problem.

Sep 24, 2012 7:24 AM in response to Ted Savas

Hi,

Check if you have this file in your system

/System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.afpstat.plist
.

It was added in the original 10.8.0 but was causing problem. See this post for more information:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4213550?start=0&tstart=0


When I installed ML, I had spinning ball and erasing it solved my problem on my MBP mid 2011.

Different problem source, but same annoying effect.

cheers

Sep 28, 2012 5:51 PM in response to jianglai

Just to add another datapoint, I landed here after encountering the same problem.


System: mid-2011 Macbook Air, 1.8GHz i7, running 10.8.2, with a 480 GB OWC SSD.

Symptom: I noticed that Spotlight was frequently reindexing my SSD. I also experienced intermittent spikes in CPU usage and fan use, and, intermittent system freezes (no gray screen of death, but everything would just be frozen "in stasis" requiring a hard reset.


Sample messages from Console:

9/28/12 8:32:18.785 PM mds[74]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

9/28/12 8:32:20.011 PM mdworker[464]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

9/28/12 8:32:20.018 PM mdworker[462]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

9/28/12 8:33:34.792 PM mdworker[536]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

9/28/12 8:33:34.798 PM mdworker[537]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

9/28/12 8:34:47.205 PM mdworker[551]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

9/28/12 8:34:47.212 PM mdworker[552]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

9/28/12 8:37:36.395 PM mdworker[592]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

9/28/12 8:37:36.401 PM mdworker[591]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

9/28/12 8:39:47.845 PM mdworker[607]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

9/28/12 8:39:47.851 PM mdworker[606]: Unable to talk to lsboxd

10.8.2 spotlight indexing issue

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