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Very long spotlight indexing

Spotlight started re-indexing my computer and indicates very long time to finish:


User uploaded file


12 months sounds a bit too long for me 😕 What to do about it? Is it somehow related to the 10.7.5 update that I installed recently?


Thanks for help.

Posted on Sep 21, 2012 10:58 AM

Reply
30 replies

Sep 21, 2012 3:02 PM in response to pepa_u

I am experiencing the same issue. Before I turned on Wi-Fi, the search would take 32 hours. Now, its ...User uploaded file


I gather only a few of us are having these problems, since you haven't had any replies. Yes, I believe it is because of the 10.7.5 update. It is making my computer so sl~~ow! On other sites, 10.7.4 users who updated are also complaining about this problem.


Hey, after writing this, now it's down to only 28 hours!

Sep 21, 2012 3:46 PM in response to pepa_u

I am having the same issue as well. After reparing permission, my indexing time reduced from 4 days to 5 hours.

However, this 5 hours has been shown on screen for the whole day today...


And I am expreinecing an ultra-slow time machine backup after this 10.7.5 update from 10.7.4, 30mins for 72kb back-up.


Hope there is a team dealing with these issues...

Sep 23, 2012 12:45 PM in response to pepa_u

I found and tried this:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1327936

where "pmau" suggest these commands:



a) List available plugins on your system

mdimport -L


b) Show the status of the indexing process:

mdutil -s -a -v

c) force clean rebuild of the index (after you posted the output of above commands)


mdutil -a -E

d) Check /var/log/system.log


you might look into that file to check for message of spotlight, or mds the importing daemon.



And the result are these messages in the system log:



Sep 23 21:36:18 applik com.apple.mtmd[2175]: Spotlight cannot end the session: 1, for /

Sep 23 21:39:49 applik mds[2113]: (/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2/9D4D7FF9-1CE2-44E3-A3F8-223A14835999)(Error) IndexStore in bool setLocalizedAttributesLocked(datastore_info*, db_obj**, const __CFString**, const __CFDictionary**, CFIndex, StoreOptions, const __CFDictionary*, bool, bool, const __CFArray*):Error:7 setting field:com_apple_system_prefs_keywords for oid:19091733

Sep 23 21:39:56 applik mds[2113]: (/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2/9D4D7FF9-1CE2-44E3-A3F8-223A14835999)(Error) IndexStore in bool setLocalizedAttributesLocked(datastore_info*, db_obj**, const __CFString**, const __CFDictionary**, CFIndex, StoreOptions, const __CFDictionary*, bool, bool, const __CFArray*):Error:7 setting field:com_apple_system_prefs_keywords for oid:19106139

Sep 23 21:39:57 applik mds[2113]: (/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2/9D4D7FF9-1CE2-44E3-A3F8-223A14835999)(Error) IndexStore in bool setLocalizedAttributesLocked(datastore_info*, db_obj**, const __CFString**, const __CFDictionary**, CFIndex, StoreOptions, const __CFDictionary*, bool, bool, const __CFArray*):Error:7 setting field:com_apple_system_prefs_keywords for oid:19109698

Sep 23 21:39:57 applik mds[2113]: (/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2/9D4D7FF9-1CE2-44E3-A3F8-223A14835999)(Error) IndexStore in bool setLocalizedAttributesLocked(datastore_info*, db_obj**, const __CFString**, const __CFDictionary**, CFIndex, StoreOptions, const __CFDictionary*, bool, bool, const __CFArray*):Error:7 setting field:com_apple_system_prefs_keywords for oid:19103413

Sep 23 21:40:03 applik mds[2113]: (/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2/9D4D7FF9-1CE2-44E3-A3F8-223A14835999)(Error) IndexStore in bool setLocalizedAttributesLocked(datastore_info*, db_obj**, const __CFString**, const __CFDictionary**, CFIndex, StoreOptions, const __CFDictionary*, bool, bool, const __CFArray*):Error:7 setting field:com_apple_system_prefs_keywords for oid:19120109



Any ideas, please?

Sep 23, 2012 7:45 PM in response to pepa_u

We're having the same issue after installing 10.7.5 update. So far this has happened with the last three computers we updated.


We're upgrading some computers using a DeployStudio image with 10.7.4. But now that 10.7.5 is out, the workflow detects that update in our Software Update Server, and installs it too. When the machines boot up, Spotlight gives an extremely long indexing estimate even when there's no user data present (just OS and software).


There has to be a way to bring it down to normal.

Sep 24, 2012 1:01 AM in response to Halloween_Jack

Some of the contributors in the thread time machine slow in 10.7.5 have found that there is a systematic issue with Spotlight in 10.7.5 which leads to abnormally long indexing times (and Time Machine backups, for that matter).


Until Apple has fixed this, it's probably best to disable Spotlight altogether:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist


Once fixed, you can re-enable Spotlight as follows:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist


See also http://osxdaily.com/2011/12/10/disable-or-enable-spotlight-in-mac-os-x-lion/


Message was edited by: Michael Muench - changed typo: the issue was introduced with the 10.7.5 update, of course

Sep 25, 2012 3:27 PM in response to pepa_u

Glad to see that others are seeing this issue. Pre 10.7.5, Indexing worked on our machines, and then after combo updating to 10.7.5, it slowed to a crawl. On our systems, it looks like it is taking about 20 times as long to index post 10.7.5 update. This happened on every machine that was updated. 100% success in Spotlight failing.


Seriously hoping that Apple is aware of this and working on a bug fix. I tried to submit a bug report at bugreport.apple.com but that option is not available unless you are a developer. Doh!

Very long spotlight indexing

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