mdutil -t

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Level 1

8 points

mdutil -t

I have OS X 10.8.5 and have noted the following message in the console log...

02/10/2016 12:59:47.893 sandboxd[579]: ([572]) mdworker32(572) deny mach-lookup com.apple.PowerManagement.control (import fstype:hfs fsflag:480D000 flags:240000005E diag:0 uti:com.microsoft.word.openxml.document plugin:/Library/Spotlight/Microsoft Office.mdimporter - find suspect file using: sudo mdutil -t 567061)

Can anyone tell me what the mdutil -t is telling me. When run it points to one of my own files, in this case one in the documents Directory.

Regards,

Martin

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Oct 2, 2016 5:49 AM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

250,511 points

Oct 2, 2016 1:23 PM in response to martin3090

Does that Doc open in Word OK?

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Answer 2

martin3090 Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 2, 2016 2:03 PM in response to BDAqua

HI BDAqua,

Yes the target document opens Ok 😟 I have been having all sorts of issues with my ML recently and have installed clean several times ! Various sandboxd deny messages, which seem to be fixed with resetpasword ACL at least for the time being, have plagued me over the past week(s). This issue is a new variant which does seem to have some pointers on how to solve the problem, only problem there is no documentation as to what the -t option of MDUTIL is telling you. Do yo have any idea ?

Regards,

Martin.

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Answer 3

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,684 points

Oct 3, 2016 3:25 AM in response to martin3090

Is it the inode number of the file?

$ mdutil -t 1234

/some/file/path

$ ls -i /some/file/path

1234 /some/file/path

man ls for the explanation of 'ls -i'…

-i -i For each file, print the file's file serial number (inode number).

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Answer 4

martin3090 Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 3, 2016 3:39 AM in response to Drew Reece

Hello Drew,

Thanks for your reply it answered my question as to what the mystery number identified ! I did the lookup and yes the numbers match. The next question is, why did this file cause a problem.

Regards,

Martin.

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Answer 5

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,684 points

Oct 3, 2016 9:37 AM in response to martin3090

I don't really know what the error says beyond the fact that Microsofts metatdata import tool is having issues with something in that file.

If you want to to fix it tell Microsoft, possibly passing them a copy of the file - how old is your Office suite?

Another option is to create multiple copies of the file, remove 50% of the content & wait for them to be reindexed. See which half of the files throws the error & keep repeating until you reach a point where a copy no longer throws errors. Eventually you may isolate it to a character, string or piece of data that the indexer does not like in that file.

Frankly this is why we don't spend time looking at logs - error messages come & go all the time and many of them don't alter how we use the computer.

If you want to see more of these messages delete & reindex your drives in Spotlight. Indexing chokes on many files but as far as I can tell it is not that much of a problem most of the time.

You probably have 1 million or more files on disk and a few hundred of these type of errors.

Search for some of the text in that file in Spotlight - is it indexed?

Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

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Answer 6

martin3090 Author

Level 1

8 points

Oct 4, 2016 8:18 AM in response to Drew Reece

Hello Drew,

You have a valid point in that the console log can be full of scary stuff most of which does seem to have a effect of the use of the machine. I only got caught up with this particular message as I had been having an issue with a frozen machine which just may have been due to a Spotlight index issue, or not. Coincidentally the log at that time had many sandboxd error messages which I wanted to get to the bottom of and I had hoped that the message here would shed more light on the whole issue. It would appear this is not the case.

As you have answered my original question I will close this as fixed. Thanks again for you input.

Regards,

Martin

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Answer 7

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,684 points

Oct 4, 2016 8:50 AM in response to martin3090

Some messages are just notifications that don't mean much beyond 'hey look at this if you are troubleshooting this type of issue'.

Picking out the serious ones from the noise is 1/2 the battle. Good luck with the other issue, stuck processes can be a pain to diagnose. I'd use safe mode & disable login items to see if that makes it go away. Hold shift at startup for safe mode or hold shift after clicking the login button to disable login items, besides that reboot & post a new topic if you can manage to reproduce it.

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