cannot reindex with spotlight after installing Yosemite

Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on solving Spotlight problems. This problem is one on your computer. It is not Apple's fault or the upgrades fault. Having tested this on three of my own computers where everything is working as expected. So, if you need slap someone silly for this start with the user. 🙂

Step 1

These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:

syslog -F '$Time $Message' -k Sender mdworker -o -k Message Rne Norm -k Sender mds | tail | pbcopy

Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.

Launch the built-in Terminal application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.

Paste into the Terminal window by pressing the key combination command-V. I've tested these instructions only with the Safari web browser. If you use another browser, you may have to press the return key after pasting.

The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) to appear.

The output of the command will be automatically copied to the Clipboard. If the command produced no output, the Clipboard will be empty. Paste into a reply to this message.

The Terminal window doesn't show the output. Please don't copy anything from there.

If any personal information appears in the output, anonymize before posting, but don’t remove the context.

Step 2

Enter the following command as in Step 1 and post the output:

mdutil -as 2>&- | pbcopy

You can then quit Terminal.

Step 3

Launch the Console application in the same way you launched Terminal. In the Console window, look under the heading DIAGNOSTIC AND USAGE INFORMATION on the left for crash reports related to Spotlight. If you don't see that heading, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar. A Spotlight crash report has a name beginning in "mds" or "mdworker" and ending in ".crash". Select the most recent such report, if any, from the System and User subcategories and post the entire contents—the text, please, not a screenshot. In the interest of privacy, I suggest that, before posting, you edit out the “Anonymous UUID,” a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes in the header of the report, if it’s present (it may not be.)

Please don’t post any other kind of diagnostic report, such as hang logs—they're very long and not helpful.

Please add your home folder (represented by a house icon in the sidebar of a Finder window) to the Privacy list in the Spotlight preference pane. See whether indexing completes. Then remove the exclusion and see what happens.

None of those folders is related to the problem. You seem to have a corrupt vCard.

I suggest you start with the test I posted.

I'm not sure if this will help, but I also was unable to index Spotlight and Mail after Yosemite (I think after having it a while). I tried the usual things, such as going into Preferences, Spotlight, Privacy, then adding and removing my HD, without success. Also tried the terminal command, sudo mdutil -E /, with message that indexing was turned off. Finally realized it may have something to do with the multiple names that were being given my computer (Imac 2, etc) due to some other glitch I have read about. Went to Sharing, changed the name of my computer back to Imac on the top and on Edit changed it to Imac.local, then re-did the terminal command. Success, able to index!

I've got a similar issue. Any help is MUCH appreciated.

Step 1:

Mar 12 10:49:19 ERROR: where = <RPCChannelRequest()> why = <MDSChannelRequestRPC()> error code = 0x16c9a036 reason = <rpc_s_connection_closed (dce / rpc)>

Mar 12 10:49:19 ERROR: _MDSChannelRPCRequest: RPCChannelRequest failed 5

Mar 12 10:49:19 (Message.Error:142) MDSChannel RPC failure (openQueryWithParams:forContext:)

Mar 12 10:49:19 (Store.Error:273) <MDSDistantStore 0x7fee407ed110 shutdown:NO got shutdown notification:NO>{channel:0x7fee4052d060 localPath:'/Volumes/Backup Drive'} MDSChannel failed -- initiating recovery

Mar 12 12:05:21 -[__NSArrayM objectForKey:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x7fb95e20a2b0

Mar 12 12:09:15 Failed to obtain sandbox extension for path=/Users/"homedir"/Library/Caches/mdworker. Errno:1

Mar 12 12:09:15 Failed to obtain sandbox extension for path=/Users/"homedir"/Library/Caches/mdworker. Errno:1

Mar 12 12:09:34 -[__NSArrayM objectForKey:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x7f8f5072e0c0

Mar 12 12:10:21 Failed to obtain sandbox extension for path=/Users/"homedir"/Library/Caches/mdworker. Errno:1

Mar 12 12:10:21 Failed to obtain sandbox extension for path=/Users/"homedir"/Library/Caches/mdworker. Errno:1

Step 2:

/:

Error: unexpected indexing state. kMDConfigSearchLevelTransitioning

/.MobileBackups:

No index.

/Volumes/Backup Drive:

Server search enabled.

/Volumes/MobileBackups:

Index is read-only.

/Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb:

Index is read-only.

Step 3:

There is an "mds_year-month-date-time_computername.crash" log being made quite frequently with "Exception Type: EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION (SIGILL)"

Any suggestions?

FWIW: It appears that when I connect to my NAS it starts producing numerous mds_crash logs.