Q: mdworker crashes constantly; spotlight re-indexes
I have searched the internet and all communities trying to find a solution to my spotlight problem. I have posted in a couple of other forums and am re-posting here in a more organized fashion those posts plus additional information.
I recently moved my administrative user account over from an older mac via firewire/lightning connection, using the migration app. Since that time, my iMac, with the latest El Capitan update, has been continuously indexing. It takes hours (I transferred about 500Gb of files), then works OK for a brief period and then begins indexing again. I have moved my hard drive into the "privacy" portion of Spotlight prefs and back out, causing re-indexing. I have deleted the Spotlight index and had it re-index via Terminal, used disk utility to check my hard drive, used Onyx to rebuild permissions and re-index Spotlight. Spotlight takes a few hours to re-index, seems to work fine for a short time and then begins re-indexing and is not available for use once again. It has completely slowed my work to a crawl, since I use Spotlight continuously to retrieve and compare files and folders, as well as launch apps.
I noted on the crash logs that mds_stores is crashing and have had mdworker crash almost daily. SophosWebintelligence had also crashed on similar but not always the same days. I deleted Sophos anti-viral software, placed my hard drive into the "Privacy" section of Spotlight prefs to stop the continuous indexing, booted into safe mode, re-booted into my regular desktop, pulled my hard drive out of privacy settings, allowed Spotlight to AGAIN index my hard drive overnight and thought my problem was fixed. It lasted a day. It's now back to re-indexing and the crash logs show mds_stores crashed again, but now, while watching Console during indexing, mdworker is crashing mili-second by mili-second! Under user diagnostic reports, it lists mdworker_2016-06-(various times)_Dorks-iMac.crash over and over and under system diagnostic reports it lists mds_stores_2001-06-(various times)_Dorks-iMac.crash. I also noted this in the logs:
6/30/16 7:10:46.589 AM mdworker[9839]: WARNING: The Gestalt selector gestaltSystemVersion is returning 10.9.5 instead of 10.11.5. This is not a bug in Gestalt -- it is a documented limitation. Use NSProcessInfo's operatingSystemVersion property to get correct system version number.
Call location:
Not sure the above is the most relevant thing in the logs, but never had problems on my newer mac until I made the mistake of migrating my user account from my older mac. Not sure what NSProcessInfo is, but will research it.
If anyone has any suggestions, they would be very much appreciated. If any additional info would help, I'd be glad to get it. I didn't want to post too much useless stuff here and needlessly take up too much of your time. I apologize for the font changes, but couldn't figure out how to copy/paste while keeping same style.
Posted on Jun 30, 2016 8:46 AM
While my fingers, toes and eyes are all crossed, I'm still holding my breath and still saying my prayers, I have now had a stable Spotlight for over 48 hrs and wanted to thank Linc Davis and Eric Root for their great help! I wanted to outline the final steps I took to solve my situation. This solution is probably only relevant for someone like myself who made the mistake of migrating a user account using Migration Assistant to a newer iMac from an older iMac, since that's when all my problems started. Here are the steps (in addition to the steps outlined by Linc and Eric that I had already performed; also, I had already move my Macintosh Hd into the privacy setting in Spotlight to stop the indexing):
1) Back up all critical data such as photos, movies, music, documents, etc. Back up to multiple places.
2) Move said data to the Shared user account. This keeps from having to transfer zillions of files from an external drive or remote source back to the account you're reconstructing.
3) Delete problem user account via System Preferences/Users & Groups. I also had to manually delete the problem user account folder since it remained on Macintosh HD after deleting via Users prefs (for some reason that I do not understand, upon deleting the problem user account from a separate administrative user account, it did not give me the three options it's supposed to give, i.e., "Keep home folder of user", etc???)
4) Delete the .Spotlight-V100 folder as outlined by Linc Davis here and elsewhere.
5) Re-create the just deleted user account, using the same user name. Check the "new" account to be sure it works OK.
6) Move the user data back from Shared to this "new" user account.
7) Move Macintosh HD (or whatever your hard drive is called) out of privacy setting in Spotlight prefs to re-start indexing.
8) Take a break; come out of your cave you've been dwelling in for the past few days trying to get this problem resolved. Depending upon how much data is on your computer, re-indexing may take awhile.
9) Check and see if Spotlight is working. Make a list of any file additions or changes you make for the next couple of days in case things go cross ways again and you have to try to figure out what you did or what you may need to do additional backup of. (I didn't want to do a full back up to my two primary back up sources until I was sure everything was working OK.)
10) Once you're sure everything's working, back up everything again.
If Linc or Eric review this and feel any of this is a problem, please add or subtract anything deemed dangerous!
Posted on Jul 7, 2016 11:50 AM