mr.mbarnes

Q: Spotlight missing / random / no results (El Capitan)

Ok, so Spotlight has never worked reliably for me since I moved on from Snow Leopard.

Recently though it has rarely worked at all - and it has been like this from day one of El Capitan (after Clean Install).

I've attached a good example - I searched for Kind:Folder and CPD (also tried Title:CPD and Any:CPD)

I know full well where my 'CPD' folder is (see window behind), but Spotlight certainly doesn't!

In fact, it's showing no results at all (there's no spinning wheel, and I have left it some time).

Frequently it shows random results I cannot figure where it has got them, and once I showed the results (I think) from the last search.

This would be find if there was any other search facility still in OS-X, but this is a pretty fundamental deficit in an OS!

 

I have made some efforts to troubleshoot this before -

    Disk First Aid

    Adding MacHD to secret folders and then removing

    Some md reset console commands but I forget specifics).

Any ideas / anyone king enough to talk me through other ways to get this working?


CONSOLE ERRORS (SELECTED FROM LOADS OF DUPLICATES

I have found a load of errors in terminal... here's a selection (not sure what many of them mean, or why there is there is a sandbox deny error?

15/05/2016 08:03:48.055 sandboxd[164]: ([1351]) SpotlightNetHelp(1351) deny ipc-posix-shm-read-data CFPBS:186D7:

15/05/2016 08:03:48.069 sandboxd[164]: ([1351]) SpotlightNetHelp(1351) deny file-read-data /Users/martyn/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist

15/05/2016 08:03:48.077 sandboxd[164]: ([1351]) SpotlightNetHelp(1351) deny ipc-posix-shm-read-data CFPBS:186D7:

15/05/2016 08:03:48.082 sandboxd[164]: ([1351]) SpotlightNetHelp(1351) deny file-read-data /Users/martyn/Library/Preferences/ByHost/.GlobalPreferences.9631D9B7-A6D5-5851- 90BE-88F3ED190F90.plist

15/05/2016 08:04:02.633 SpotlightNetHelper[1351]: tcp_connection_tls_session_error_callback_imp 128 __tcp_connection_tls_session_callback_write_block_invoke.434 error 22 (SECOND MOST COMMON ERROR I FOUND)

15/05/2016 08:19:15.777 SpotlightNetHelper[1351]: tcp_connection_tls_session_error_callback_imp 144 __tcp_connection_tls_session_callback_write_block_invoke.434 error 32

15/05/2016 08:06:03.125 Spotlight[1344]: XPC connection was invalidated (MOST COMMON ERROR I FOUND)

15/05/2016 08:19:15.776 SpotlightNetHelper[1351]: tcp_connection_destination_handle_tls_close_notify 144 closing socket due to TLS CLOSE_NOTIFY alert

15/05/2016 08:33:34.587 sandboxd[164]: ([1362]) storeaccountd(1362) deny file-write-create /Users/martyn/Library/Caches/com.apple.Spotlight/ProductionBag

 

Screen Shot 2016-05-15 at 08.31.12.png

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.4), Filevault Encryption

Posted on May 15, 2016 12:45 AM

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Q: Spotlight missing / random / no results (El Capitan)

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  • by Lexiepex,

    Lexiepex Lexiepex May 15, 2016 6:10 AM in response to mr.mbarnes
    Level 6 (10,477 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 15, 2016 6:10 AM in response to mr.mbarnes

    unencrypt (filevault). This may take a considerable amount of time.

    then do what you did earlier: re index ("Adding MacHD to secret folders and then removing")

  • by Linc Davis,

    Linc Davis Linc Davis May 15, 2016 7:23 AM in response to mr.mbarnes
    Level 10 (207,958 points)
    Applications
    May 15, 2016 7:23 AM in response to mr.mbarnes

    First, your problem has nothing to do with FileVault. Does any Spotlight search work? Is the folder you searched for inside your home folder?

  • by mr.mbarnes,

    mr.mbarnes mr.mbarnes May 15, 2016 12:27 PM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 15, 2016 12:27 PM in response to Linc Davis

    Hi both and thanks for the start on this.

    I had wondered about Filevault - I have certainly had random and pretty severe problems before with it, but the latest version seems much better.

    Nonetheless, Linc is pretty solid on this so I shall save that thought!

     

    Yes, the folder was in my home folder - /Users/martyn/Documents/Work/MB Appraisal/MB Appraisal 2016/01. CPD and Certificates.

    There were plenty of other folders with CPD in their title too - none displayed.

    That said, yes, some searches show what I am after, but it's pretty random.

    Right now, I cannot actually reproduce the problem above even, but I did just do the Add Mac HD to secrecy list trick after my post.

    I have done this countless times before though (e.g. last week) and everything fails again soon enough.

    I dont recall it always even temporarily fixing the problem either, but it takes some time to reindex, so I haven't always gone and checked!

    Half way through reindexing just now.


    I have known it to show the last searches results (even when the last search never managed to!), sometimes it shows nothing at all when I know (like above) that there are matches.

    On the whole I am talking about the Finder search (as above - CMD-opt-Space) rather than simple Spotlight, but they both seem affected by the same.

  • by Eric Root,

    Eric Root Eric Root May 15, 2016 1:44 PM in response to mr.mbarnes
    Level 9 (71,096 points)
    iTunes
    May 15, 2016 1:44 PM in response to mr.mbarnes

    Spotlight not working          see post by Linc Davis

  • by Linc Davis,

    Linc Davis Linc Davis May 15, 2016 1:55 PM in response to mr.mbarnes
    Level 10 (207,958 points)
    Applications
    May 15, 2016 1:55 PM in response to mr.mbarnes

    It's pretty hard to fix a problem that you can't reproduce.

  • by mr.mbarnes,

    mr.mbarnes mr.mbarnes May 15, 2016 2:48 PM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    May 15, 2016 2:48 PM in response to Linc Davis

    I know, but I hope you understand that I'm not looking for a fix to find my CPD folder.

    I'm looking for a fix to the recurrent problems I get with Spotlight requiring me to reset it every few days.

    If reseting it every few days and spending hours reindexing is the answer, it's not a great one!

    I'm not entirely sure a reset reliably solves all the problems either - I was surprised it had this time.

     

    It is pretty random when Spotlight works or not, but that makes it all the worse.

    I have thought things lost, done a lot of work to reproduce them only to find them suddenly reappear later.

     

    Anyway, I take it none of the spotlight console errors I listed mean anything to you?

    If you need something more to work on then perhaps I shall have to get back when it happens again?

     

    Noting Eric's post suggesting I follow your other thread's advice to delete a subfolder from /.Spotlight-V100

    I did have a look and found no sub-folder as described there?

    Perhaps you meant to delete /.Spotlight-V100 itself? - it's invisible, so maybe I can only do this in the terminal?

    Maybe not your recommendation right now anyway?

  • by Linc Davis,

    Linc Davis Linc Davis May 15, 2016 3:54 PM in response to mr.mbarnes
    Level 10 (207,958 points)
    Applications
    May 15, 2016 3:54 PM in response to mr.mbarnes

    This is a diagnostic procedure. It makes no changes and therefore will not, in itself, solve the problem. The steps should be taken when you can reproduce the problem with Spotlight.

    Step 1

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

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

    { mdutil -as 2>&-; echo; mdimport -L 2>&1; echo; syslog -F \$Message -k Sender mdworker -o -k Message Rne Norm -k Sender mds -o -k Sender sandboxd -k Message Seq mdutil | tail -100 | sort | uniq | tail -50; } | pbcopy

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

    Launch the built-in Terminal application in any one 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 and start typing the name.

    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

    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," "mdworker," or "mdwrite," 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.

    When you post the results, you might see an error message on the web page: "You have included content in your post that is not permitted," or "The message contains invalid characters." That's a bug in the forum software. Please post the text on Pastebin, then post a link here to the page you created.

    If you have an account on Pastebin, please don't select Private from the Paste Exposure menu on the page, because then no one but you will be able to see it.