Spotlight needs 4 months to index...

I read various questions on here regards Spotlight issues as I noticed earlier that spotlight is indexing, and probably has been for some time.
Also my time machine updates seem to be stuck or at least very slow, saying 1.51GB being backed up out of 4.72GB with the last back up completed 3 days ago.
The only thing I did then was install Office for Mac 2011 and I wonder if something is corrupting/ confusing the spotlight function?
Happy to remove Office if I have to, only loaded it cos I had a spare licence having bought it for my son on a 3 computer licence deal, but I don't want it if it is going to cause me problems.
Any help will be welcome as to how I can get back to pre Saturday workings...!
Thanks

This is a known problem since the update to 10.7.5. See the many other threads that discuss this problem.
At the moment there is not solution, we have to wait for Apple to provide a fix.

Similar Messages

Spotlight does not complete indexing

About 2 months ago I noticed two unusual things on my wife's MBP (see specs below). The first was that the spotlight kept indexing and it did not end regardless of how much time I allowed it to run. On the other hand, time machine backups would start when the external Time Machine HD was connected but it would stall before completing the backup to the point that I would have to cancel the backup completely. I noticed these two conditions basically at the same time, and at first I thought they were unrelated.
Regarding the spotlight indexing I tried several remedies I found on different forums, but none worked for my particular problem.
Tried several times to rebuild the index by adding and then removing the Macintosh HD into System Preferences/Spotight/Privacy/ panel.
Repaired disk using the [Disk Utility on] install disk. No problems were found. Also repaired permissions just in case, but no luck either.
Tried resetting the PRAM.
Tried resetting the home folder permissions and ACLs via reset password utility on the OSX Install disk.
Tried to index the HD from another user account (which had also Administrator privileges).
Using the Console and the Activity Monitor I noticed that when the indexing started, I would see the mds, mdworker and mdworker32 processes running. Also I would see disk activity and if I clicked on the spotlight icon I would see that the time remaining to complete the index would decrease. However, at some point both mdworker processes would halt (disappear from the activity monitor), and then the mds process CPU usage would jump to 98% or more. At this point the spotlight indexing time remaining would start to rise gradually. I remember seeing indexing completion times as high as 52 hours. The only way to get out of this was to exclude the Macintosh HD from the spotlight and then reboot the machine. I am aware that this would also delete whatever progress was made with the index file and that future attempts would need to rebuild the index from scratch.
After making several attempts to rebuild the index and having the same result, I though that there was a maybe corrupted file or folder that would be causing the problem.
In an attempt to isolate the problem, I made the following:
First I had the Macintosh HD excluded from the spotlight search and rebooted the machine.
I added all the folders under Macintosh HD (e.g. Applications, Library, System, Users, etc.). After adding the folders, I then removed Macintosh HD. This would have the same effect as adding the Macintosh HD excluded, but with the flexibility of being able to build the index by adding folders one by one until the problem showed up again.
I started removing folders from the Spotlight privacy panel until the problem arose. I noticed the problem had occured when the mds process would reach 98% or more AND the mdworker processes had disappeared from the Activity Monitor.
Once I found the folder where the problem was (in my case was the Users folder), then I would add all the folders under the Users folder and repeat the process again.
After several iterations, I found that the folder causing the problem was ~/Library/Application Support/Mobile Sync/Backup/<UDID>; where <UDID> corresponds the my wife's iPhone's UDID number as seen on iTunes. By excluding the <UDID> folder the spotlight would run without problems. If I added this folder, then the problem would reappear.
Turns out that the folders that is causing the problem is the backup folder for my wife’s iPhone. I don’t mind this folder being indexed, however I also discovered that the Time Machine problem I mentioned earlier would be resolved by excluding this same folder from the TM backups; and THIS concerns me.
I though the problem was a corrupt backup folder so in an attempt to solve this I deleted the backup from iTunes and made a full phone backup. Unfortunately this did not solve my problem. I am still not able to include the iPhone backup folder as part of either spotlight or TM.
Any help on this matter is greatly appreciated.
MacBook Pro 13in. Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz (mid 2010)
4GB RAM
OSX 10.6.8
iTunes 11.4
iPhone 5 (model MD641LL/A), iOS 6.1.4

Hello,
I'm seeing the same kind of problem. Here are the symptoms:
-Some or all data from a Mac previously running 10.3, is migrated to a Mac using 10.4. The Migration Assistant is used.
-Spotlight will continuously re-index, stop for a brief period, and repeat, either by itself, or when a search is attempted.
-Erasing the indices with mdutil -E, running fsck, fixing permissions and stopping/starting Spotlight doesn't resolve the problem.
-Excluding the migrated user directory will stop the madness. I.e., other users and shared directories like Applications, are searchable, and Spotlight will stop the continuous re-indexing.
-Recreating the user directory from scratch, and then copying in data from a backup, may once again start the madness.
The big question is, what, exactly, causes the indexing cycle?
The client affected by the problem is very disappointed, and had cause to wonder "how is this any better than Vista? I would have been better off with a Windows PC". I really need to resolve this, but I'm not sure of the best way to get Apple Tech involved with this bug.
Many Macs Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Spotlight does not stop indexing

I need help: Just started the brand new MacPro 2x 2.66. The long desired spotlight (I run osx 1.3.9 before) does not work. Spotlight never stop to index. It runs and runs. If I add the hard drive to privacy in the system preferences it stops, but as soon as I get it back it just continues to index. So I've never been able to use Spotlight. Another harddrive in the machine (one without just data, no system) is swiftly indexed. But as soon as I have the main HD open for indexing, Spotlight continues to index for ever.
The harddrive causing the prooblem has previously been used in another computer under 1.3.9
Any ideas for fixing this would be much appreciated.
MacPro 2x 2.66 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Hello,
I'm seeing the same kind of problem. Here are the symptoms:
-Some or all data from a Mac previously running 10.3, is migrated to a Mac using 10.4. The Migration Assistant is used.
-Spotlight will continuously re-index, stop for a brief period, and repeat, either by itself, or when a search is attempted.
-Erasing the indices with mdutil -E, running fsck, fixing permissions and stopping/starting Spotlight doesn't resolve the problem.
-Excluding the migrated user directory will stop the madness. I.e., other users and shared directories like Applications, are searchable, and Spotlight will stop the continuous re-indexing.
-Recreating the user directory from scratch, and then copying in data from a backup, may once again start the madness.
The big question is, what, exactly, causes the indexing cycle?
The client affected by the problem is very disappointed, and had cause to wonder "how is this any better than Vista? I would have been better off with a Windows PC". I really need to resolve this, but I'm not sure of the best way to get Apple Tech involved with this bug.
Many Macs Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Spotlight doesn't stop indexing

Hi guys,
Every time I start my iMac (everything up to date, Mac OS X 10.8.2) Spotlight starts calculating the time it will take to complete the indexing. And it takes many, many hours until it actually starts indexing - today I waited 15 hours, then shut the indexing of, restarted the SystemUIServer and waited again maybe 6 hours of calculating the time. Now Spotlight actually startet the indexing; I had that one or two times but then shut my computer off since I had to go to bed, now I'll keep it on to see what happens. I'll post tomorrow what happened, but that Spotlight takes so long to start indexing is a problem that shouldn't be and that should be mentioned and fixed.
Greetings,
Jannis

Please read this whole message before doing anything. This procedure is a diagnostic test. It’s unlikely to solve your problem. Don’t be disappointed when you find that nothing has changed after you complete it. The purpose of this test is to determine whether your problem is caused by third-party system modifications that load automatically at startup or login. Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed for the test, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards. Boot in safe mode* and log in to the account with the problem. The instructions provided by Apple are as follows:
Shut down your computer, wait 30 seconds, and then hold down the shift key while pressing the power button.
When you see the gray Apple logo, release the shift key.
If you are prompted to log in, type your password, and then hold down the shift key again as you click Log in.
*Note: If FileVault is enabled under OS X 10.7 or later, or if a firmware password is set, or if the boot volume is a software RAID, you can’t boot in safe mode. Safe mode is much slower to boot and run than normal, and some things won’t work at all, including wireless networking on certain Macs. The login screen appears even if you usually log in automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin. Test while in safe mode. Same problem? After testing, reboot as usual (i.e., not in safe mode) and verify that you still have the problem. Post the results of the test.

Need suggestion on indexes

I want to create some indexes on following table in Oracle 10G database.
Table --> RegionalOrders
Columns -->
TenorderID -- PrimaryKey
custid number(6) -- ForegionKey
Empid number(6)-- ForegionKey
Region (char(4)) -- ForegionKey
Tencon varchar(20),
Tensell varchar(20),
Tendate date
Following are some of heavy activties on this table :
1) Ofter joins
2) Joins mostly based on primary key and foreigh key
I have following queries regarding indexes on this table.
a) can you please suggest what columns I can index.
b) There is not need to create index on TenorderID ( as its primary key)
c) Can we create any indexes for table joins.

I guess that will be not a very good approach to create indexes like this. If you have queries with you that you are going to write over this table and other table(s) ,looking at explain plan of them , it wil be more accurate to tell which column(s) should be indexed. Remeber , index based on a single query's performance are not of much use and will lead to more issues than benefits.
You are correct in saying that PK column is not required to be indexed.Table join indexes or anything like that is not there,you can create indexes on underlying colums.
HTH
Aman....

Need month in inwards instead of number

Hi All,
We need month in inwards (like January) instead of in number and this is an user input, we havent maintained text for the months .we are looking is there any possibility of writing VBA coding to display month in inwards.
Also we have user input of year which is currently displaying as 2007(which is inputted by user) we need to display it as financial year (like 2006-2007).is there any possibility of doing like this.
Regards
Deva

Hi Priya,
In X935 go line 000050.
As you see VAKEYZEINH, VAKEY operation checks time unit. It controls *** and 001(means Hours).
Have a look table V_T538A. You will find 010 as days.
Make a copy of X935 and create your own PCR and change 001 to 010.
Regards,
Omid

Do I need to create indexes on column name?

Following queries have been shown as bad sql :
select * from t1 where name = 'FUNCTION'
Count=     7     Avg Time=13     Min Time=0     Max Time=47
select * from t2 where name = 'USER_TYPE'
Count=2     Avg Time=85     Min Time=0     Max Time=156
select * from t3 where name = 'TEMPLATE'
Count=7     Avg Time=19     Min Time=0     Max Time=32
All these tables have less than 20 records and static tables.
Do I need to create indexes on column name?

A FTS even on very small tables can require more latches than accessing via an index. Also, a table access requires the segment header and data block to be accessed (2) whereas an index on a small index only requires access to the index root block and table block (2).
True, it's unlikely to make much of a difference in most environments but if the table is really heavily accessed, indexing even very small tables can help to reduce the related latch overheads.
Most of these small tables have PKs and are accessed via the PK so associated indexes usually exist anyways.
Cheers
Richard Foote
http://richardfoote.wordpress.com/

When do I really need to create indexes for a table?

Once I was talking to a dba in a conference.
He told me that not always I have to create indexes for a single table, it depends of its size.
He said that Oracle read registers in blocks, and for a small table Oracle can read it fully, in a single operation, so in those cases I don't need indexes and statistcs.
So I would like to know how to calculate it.
When do I really need to create indexes for a table?
If someone know any documment that explain that, or have some tips, I'd aprecciate.
Thanks.
P.S.: The version that I'm using is Oracle 9.2.0.4.0.

Hi Vin
You mentioned so many mistakes here, I don't know where to begin ...
vprabhu_2000 wrote:
There are different kinds of Index. B-tree Index is by default. Bit map index, function based index,index organized table.
B-tree index if the table is large This is incorrect. Small tables, even those consisting of rows within just one block, can benefit from an index. There is no table size too small in which an index might not be benefical. William Robertson in his post references links to my blog where I discuss this.
and if you want to retrieve 10 % or less of data then B-tree index is good. This is all wrong as well. A FTS on a (say) million row table could very well be more efficient when retrieving (say) just 1% of data. An index could very well be more efficient when retrieving 100% of data. There's nothing special about 10% and there is no such magic number ...
>
Bit Map Index - On low cardinality columns like Sex for eg which could have values Male,Female create a bit map index. Completely and utterly wrong. A bitmap index might be the perfect type of index, better than a B-Tree, even if there are (say) 100,000 distinct values in the table. That a bitmap index is only suitable for low cardinality columns is just not true. And what if it's an OLTP application, with lot's of concurrent DML on the underlining table, do you really think a bitmap index would be a good idea ?
>
You can also create an Index organized table if there are less rows to be stored so data is stored only once in index and not in table. Not sure what you mean here but an IOT can potentially be useful if you have very large numbers of rows in the table. The number of rows has nothing to do with whether an IOT is suitable or not.
>
Hope this info helps. Considering most of it is wrong, I'm not sure it really helps at all :(
Cheers
Richard Foote
http://richardfoote.wordpress.com/

Explorer/Polestar: Need to re-index every time new data was loaded?

I have a question concerning the indexing functionality of BO Explorer/Polestar. It's clear that I need to re-index my infospace everytime the structure of the infospace has changed (e.g. I added a new object from my universe). What I'm not sure about is whether I also need to re-index my infospace as soon as new data was loaded in the warehouse which is supposed to be a part of my infospace. Example: I crate an infospace consisting of countries (UK, USA, Germany and Japan) and revenue. I index this infospace. The next day a new country (France) is loaded in the dwh. Do I need to re-index the infospace so that users can see "France" in BO Explorer?
Thanks for your help!
Agnes

Hi Agnes,
according to the Explorer documentation new data are available AFTER reindexing.
Indexing refreshes the data and metadata in Information Spaces. After
indexing, any new data on the corporate data providers upon which those
Information Spaces are based becomes available for search and exploration.
Regards,
Stratos

SpotLight takes forever to index

I know there are a few questions with this title, but they are really about SpotLight taking forever to prepare the indexing. In my case, it takes forever to index. It starts, get a few pixels' worth of the progress bar done, and then stops forever. I've left my computer on for hours on end hoping SoptLight will eventually finish its job; it doesn't. (By the way, it also doesn't give me an estimated remaining time; I just get the progress bar.)
I'm running Mavericks (10.9.5) on a MacBook Pro from September 2014; my computer runs on a 2.2-GHz i7 processor and has 16 GB of RAM. I've got about 420 GB of data (recovered from a TimeMachine backup) split up as follows: about 200 GB is in the computer's 250-GB internal flash-memory "hard disk", and the rest of it is in an external SeaGate 2-TB drive.
For the sake of my battery (which is eaten up ridiculously quickly by SpotLight), I've turned indexing off with the terminal command sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist. However, I do want the indexing to get done so I can actually search my Mac for stuff. I've already run into one instance of the computer being unable to find a document which I know is there (I think it was in the SeaGate drive, but it was looking everywhere, not just in the internal disk); I don't want that to happen again. So how do I get the indexing to actually get done? (Oh, I have a STRONG preference for solutions which don't involve installing third-party software.)
I'd never had this problem before, and I've restored data from TimeMachine backups in the past.
Thanks in advance for any help.

Thanks for your reply, Linc Davis.
The first terminal command resulted in the following (not knowing whether they are privacy-related or not, I replaced the hex codes after MDSImporterProxy with Xs):
Oct 4 17:25:46 (Error) ImportServer: <MDSImporterProxy 0xXXXXXXXXXXXX shutdown:NO got shutdown notification:NO> still waiting for plug-in info from bundle finder
Oct 5 12:14:16 (Error) ImportServer: <MDSImporterProxy 0xXXXXXXXXXXXX shutdown:NO got shutdown notification:NO> still waiting for plug-in info from bundle finder
Oct 5 18:20:28 (Error) ImportServer: <MDSImporterProxy 0xXXXXXXXXXXXX shutdown:NO got shutdown notification:NO> still waiting for plug-in info from bundle finder
Oct 6 08:27:29 (Error) ImportServer: <MDSImporterProxy 0xXXXXXXXXXXXX shutdown:NO got shutdown notification:NO> still waiting for plug-in info from bundle finder
Oct 6 19:48:33 (Error) ImportServer: <MDSImporterProxy 0xXXXXXXXXXXXX shutdown:NO got shutdown notification:NO> still waiting for plug-in info from bundle finder
Oct 7 09:23:53 (Error) ImportServer: <MDSImporterProxy 0xXXXXXXXXXXXX shutdown:NO got shutdown notification:NO> still waiting for plug-in info from bundle finder
The second terminal command resulted in the following:
Spotlight server is disabled.
I therefore reactivated SpotLight indexing (with the same command as in my original post, only replacing unload with load), after which I immediately reran the second terminal command. I got the following:
Error: unexpected indexing state. kMDConfigSearchLevelTransitioning
/Volumes/SeaGate:
Error: unexpected indexing state. kMDConfigSearchLevelTransitioning
I then waited a few seconds so SpotLight would start "indexing" and ran the comman a third time, this time getting the following:
Indexing enabled.
/Volumes/SeaGate:
Indexing enabled.
In the console, under "Diagnostic and usage information", there are three sections: "Diagnostic and usage messages", "User diagnostic reports" and "System diagnostic reports". I wasn't sure which of these I should look under, so I selected each of them and searched for "spotlight" (searching for either "mdworker" or ".crash" produced 4 or 5 results, all unrelated to SpotLight, and searching for "mds" returned no results). Only the first section, "Diagnostic and usage messages", had results. At first there was a single result, which I am quoting below (again, I replaced the UUID with Xs); after I turned SpotLight indexing off again (using the command on my original post), I got a second message which was identical to the one below but had no date and had the then-current time. (Note that 10.07 is the date in the format I specified in the system prefs and 11:31:47.238 is, I suppose, the time in Apple's preferred format.)
10.07 11:31:47.238 SystemUIServer[185]: com.apple.message.domain: com.apple.batterymenuextra.signature
com.apple.message.signature: com.apple.metadata.Spotlight
com.apple.message.summarize: YES
Sender_Mach_UUID: XXXXXX

Yosemite - Spotlight NTFS external drive indexing issue

Good morning!
Yosemite's spotlight doesn't seem to find any of the files on my external NTFS hard drive. I would like to know whether there is a way or not to get it done.
PS: I've added it to the privacy tab, removed it and it still not indexing. Also used the "sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist" code in terminal.

By default, OS X ships with NTFS read capability. OS X would need a third-party (Tuxera, Paragon) NTFS driver package that enables NTFS write functionality in order for Spotlight to index the NTFS drive.

Need help troubleshooting Index creation..

Hi,
I'm using RH8, Webhelp, working locally.
I've tried several times to create an index, but each time it crashes.
The first few times, I manually accepted the index keywords.....I'd spend about 25 minutes or so working on it, then RH would freeze on random files (different each time), causing me to reboot RH. I've lost the entire index because it never completed.
Now, I thought I would test it by just automatically adding the index keywords.......and after about 3-4 minutes of it working through the files, it froze. I can't even minimize the RH window, I have to reboot again.
I've created an index for a previous project with no errors......but this is not the case with this project.
Does anyone have any advice on what could be wrong? Anything errors I can eliminate? files to test? review? anything? I don't even know where to begin to troubleshoot this problem.......
Thanks!

HI,
Just following up....
1 - Yes, I have successfully created an index on a completely different project.
2 - Windows xp, 32.
I need to revisit this issue in a couple of months, I have other things to tend to. I'll post back my "next attempts" on creating an index.
but, if there's someone out there with an answer, by all means.........please share!
Thanks!

Spotlight says it's indexing "Leopard" 24/7 but it's not

Looks like Apple removed the search function on these boards?
Anyway...
As the subject says, Spotlight displays that it's indexing Leopard 24/7 as the progress bar just continues to...well...progress. But it's not as there is no extra disk activity. I tried trashing preferences and running Repair permissions but no luck.
Anyone have any insight to this?!
Mac Pro Quad 10.5.2
Many Thanks,
John V.
Message was edited by: John Vitollo
Message was edited by: John Vitollo

Well...i have 250 gigs of stuff to be indexed because i did a time machine system restore day ago.
I hava tried many things.
Deleded the /.Spotlight-V100 directories from every parttion, then rebooted or issued "mdutil -E /" ..
also checked the "mdutil -i on /"
This is strange, it seems it does start the indexing and it did finish fine on the smaller external partittion but seems to take ages on the main disk. Maybe i have too much stuff and i need to just keep it on for a day or so LOL. I dont think its a corrupted file because i just managed to reset and start it again, and this time it did go further.
Of course i have verified disk and permissions.
I have tons of HD video, and lot of .pdf files, so maybe its "normal". I Will now keep it indexing even thou it seems to stay idling a lot without noticable cpu / disk activity. I will report back later

Converting VARCHAR2 to a DATE type-then need month spelled out

I have a field that should be a DATE type, but is instead a VARCHAR2(8). The data in the VARCHAR2(8) field is displayed as what looks like a date -- EX: 09/18/09. I need to be able to convert the VARCHAR2(8) field so that it brings back the spelled out month plus the numeric day and year -- EX: September 18, 2009.
I've been able to successfully convert a DATE type to the needed format (September 18, 2009) using the following syntax line, but now need to convert the VARCHAR2(8):
to_char(jud_report_hear_off_v.incdate,'fmMonth dd, yyyy,') as INCDATE
Your help is appreciated!!!

So here is what worked. I added this syntax line to my COMMAND in Crystal Reports:
to_date(jud_report_hear_off_v.INCDATE, 'MM/DD/YYYY') as "INCDATE",
Once that line was added into the COMMAND, the new format type was now a DATE and no longer a STRING (VARCHAR2). I added INCDATE into my report and the date appeared as 09/19/2009, as it did before, but I could now select the INCDATE field via the Format Editor and see the option to select a desired Date and Time format. I could then change the format to the choice of spelling out the month (EX: September 19, 2009).
Hope this helps others! Whew!

The time needed to reload index is longer in ICM compare to RFC.

Hi All,
Do you have the same experience in your company ??
Since we upgrade our system to SPS 18 than we need to change our communication manager to ICM from RFC.
Than we do a compare through different server with different SPS and communication manager.
Server A => Uses SPS 13 and RFC
Server B => Uses SPS 18 and ICM .
When we finish doing index reloading, we compare the time to reload the index, and it's different.
RFC is faster.
My Questions are what the factor that can make ICM longer than RFC ? Is that any common way that we can do to tune up the ICM ?
Thanks a lot and have a good day.
Best regards,
Daniel N.

Hi Daniel,
please check TA TREXADMIN -> click on TREX ABAP Customizing
here you can check some ICM parameters and can do a net performance test.
Have you already tried to trace this connection via SMICM?
You can also do some checks and settings with the trex standalone tool; tab 'connectivity'
Best Regards,
Jens

Spotlight needs 4 months to index...

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