Spotlight constantly indexing

Struggling with my new MacBook.
When I try to install some of my software (Macromedia Dreamweaver & Kaleidagraph), programs work but Spotlight never completes indexing.
I could live without it (spotlight), but I am worried it is a symptom of a larger problem. I have done erase/install several times, but every time I reload the programs the problem arises again.
Any thoughts?

Hi Miriam, thanks for responding!
I have a couple folders in the privacy area, but it's all documents and the like, no applications or programs.
In the Search Results I don't know if I ever really did anything to it, but it has the following: Applications, System Preferences, Documents, Folders, Mail Messages, Contacts, Events & To Do Items, Images, PDF Documents, Webpages, Music, Movies, Fonts, and Presentations. They are all checked.

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Spotlight constantly indexing and Time Machine endlessly preparing backup

Hi,
I have a Macbook Pro 5,5 and Mac OS X 10.8.4
Lately I noticed that Spotlight was pretty much constantly indexing, so I went to "System Preferences/Spotlight/Privacy" and I dragged my HD there to prevent Spotlight from indexing it. Then rebooted my laptop and removed my HD again, which caused my Spolight to start indexing again.
After a night of indexing, everything seemed to be working fine. Nevertheless, today Spotlight is once again constantly indexing my computer, and the bar just won't go beyond "Estimating Indexing Time". What could I do to solve this issue?
Related to this, I assume, is my inability to backup through Time Machine. I feel like Time Machine is waiting for Spotlight to complete its indexing in order to start its backup-job, is that correct?
Thanks for your help,
Sander

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
syslog -k Sender mdworker -o -k Sender mds | grep -v boxd | tail | open -f -a TextEdit
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
Launch the 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 (command-V).
The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear.
A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. If the command produced no output, the window will be empty. Post the contents of the TextEdit window (not the Terminal window), if any — the text, please, not a screenshot. The title of the window doesn't matter, and you don't need to post that.

Spotlight constantly indexing (mds Abort Trap)

A couple days ago I noticed in top that mds kept cycling through pids, getting into the 2000-3000 range within an hour of bootup. I checked the system log and noticed this message occuring prior to the problem:
Nov 18 12:03:00 Optimus-Prime launchd: Server 0 in bootstrap 1103 uid 0: "/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/Metadata.framewor k/Versions/A/Support/mds"[4806]: exited abnormally: Abort trap
As a result of this Abort trap, spotlight indexes constantly, prohibiting me from searching for anything.
I tried deleting the .Spotlight-V100 directories for my drives and rebooting, and that seemed to solve the problem until about 4 am today, when the symptoms showed up again.
Has anyone else noticed this occuring with their systems? Or maybe know of a solution short of deleting the directories and rebooting?

After being directed to the spotlight subforum, R C-R's post in http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=234031&tstart=0
seems to have fixed the issue.

Spotlight constantly indexing in a never ending loop

I've upgraded my older Aluminium iMac Early 2008 model from Tiger to Snow Leopard to Lion and then Mountain Lion.
Since Mountain Lion, I've been having indexing problems. The mds process just doesn't want to stop. I have tried all the solutions.
Turn off mds from launchtl and then delete the /.Spotlight.V100/ folder, relaunch via launchctl again, then stopping indexing using, mdutil deleting via mdutil. Reboot, then also trying the recommended Machintosh HD drag into privacy and out again. I've done them all. I've added bootcamp to my privacy and also sugarsync drive and also my incomplete torrent folder.
I've re-indexed my drive, it's just no longer funny anymore. The problem is that the indexing process is running away. I check it via fs_usage for mds, and I can see the files it's opening and writing. This is not mdworker which matched my manual activity, e.g. if I make a numbers worksheet background, then of course it saves the file automatically and I can see in mdworker that it quickly indexes that file and stops.
The culprit is mds. It just continually indexes certain folders and files, which are just normal files and folders which I work on, e.g. my business documents, mail download mailboxes, iphoto library, etc. There doesn't seem to be a pattern to what it's doing. The files and folders run so fast over the terminal screen when I use fs_usage, that I know it's mds, because I can tell the activitiy matches the lines written to the terminal screen.
The problem is that this mds and HDD activity is NOT accompanied by any message in the little blue spotlight window, that is is currently indexing the drive. although it sounds exactly like it IS indexing the drive. Surely it doesn't have to reindex portions of the drive again and again. Shouldn't there come a point when it completely stops?
Normally, I have a silent computer after some indexing completes, but mostly it lasts only a day and then it starts chugging again.
Apart from re-installing, which I really don't want to do. What else is there I can try.

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below to select it:
syslog -k Sender mdworker -o -k Sender mds | grep -v boxd | tail
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
Launch the 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 (command-V).
The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear.
A TextEdit window will open with the output of the command. Post the contents of that window (not the Terminal window), if any — the text, please, not a screenshot. The title of the window doesn't matter, and you don't need to post that.
If any personal information appears in the output, anonymize before posting, but don’t remove the context.

Mail search not working + Spotlight keeps indexing

I have an old problem that has resurfaced after creating a new user on my Mac. Mail search brings no results and Spotlight is constantly indexing - day in, day out. It never seems to get there. I tried turning my hard drive to private in Spotlight settings and then taking it out. Previously Spotlight seemed to get bogged down with external drives now it's stuck indexing my Mac.
Any advice? Is there a way I get unstick this?

I can't believe that Apple have STILL not sorted this out. I haven't created a new user (so it's nothing to do with that), but Mail.app won't find anything when searching "Entire Message" in the current Mailbox or in "All Mailboxes". This has been ongoing since Leopard was first released, and we are now up to 10.5.8 without this being fixed.
Here are some of the reports:
Topic : Spotlight does not search Mail messages
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1366101
Topic : Search "Entire Message" returns "0 Found" in mailboxes
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1341832
Topic : Spotlight died on me
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1226645
Topic : I can't search through my inbox!
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1387827
Topic : Leopard's Spotlight doesn't search Mail messages
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1219030
Topic : Mail Search
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1347387
Topic : Mail Won't Search
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1204827
Topic : Search does not work
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1254966
Topic : Mail search not working
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1289253
Topic : Unable to Search Mailbox
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1232504
Topic : Why is Search in Mail.app busted?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1403758
Topic : Mail Search comes up empty
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1378473
Topic : Search "Entire Message" not working with Smart Mailboxes?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6548355&#6548355
Topic : Mail searches yield no results! Smart mailboxes also yield no results!
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1395508
Topic : 10.5.2 Mail.app search still not working (Entire Message)
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1389466

MacOSX SL constantly indexing or similar

Hi everyone.
I´ve already been through a couple of threads covering "Constantly indexing" but could´t find a simililar situation as I´m not sure if really Spotlight is the issue here. I know I know: Snow Leopard might be old school but so am I.
My iMac-late2011/MayOSX-SL is running this now the third day:
/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder
/System/Library/TextEncodings/Unicode Encodings.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Unicode Encodings
/private/var/folders/jZ/jZ2KTuydFVa+tlzLQGml1++++TI/-Caches-/com.apple.IntlDataC ache.le.sbdl
/System/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/sRGB Profile.icc
/System/Library/Fonts/Keyboard.ttf
/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework/Versions/A/Resources/GLRendererFloat .bundle/GLRendererFloat
/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.IntlDataCache.le.kbdx
/usr/share/icu/icudt40l.dat
/System/Library/Fonts/LucidaGrande.ttc
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/SArtFile .bin
/System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/HIToolbox.fram ework/Versions/A/Resources/Extras2.rsrc
/System/Library/Fonts/Helvetica.dfont
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CoreUI.framework/Versions/A/Resources/ArtFile. bin
/System/Library/Frameworks/OpenGL.framework/Versions/A/Resources/GLEngine.bundle /GLEngine
/System/Library/Extensions/ATIRadeonX3000GLDriver.bundle/Contents/MacOS/ATIRadeo nX3000GLDriver
/System/Library/Keyboard Layouts/AppleKeyboardLayouts.bundle/Contents/Resources/AppleKeyboardLayouts-L.d at
/private/var/folders/jZ/jZ2KTuydFVa+tlzLQGml1++++TI/-Caches-/com.apple.LaunchSer vices-025501.csstore
/usr/lib/dyld
/private/var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_x86_64
/dev/null
->0xffffff80147c5840
->0xffffff80147c5840
/private/etc/security/audit_control
count=1, state=0x2
at this line it goes: Users/me/ all kind of files scattered over my system like Downloads/iTunes/Documents etc etc
->0xffffff80147c3380
->0xffffff80147c2f00
->0xffffff80147c2180
->0xffffff80147c3b00
/System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/HIToolbox.fram ework/Versions/A/Resources/Extras2.rsrc
/private/etc/security/audit_class
and I have no clue what it´s doing, if it´s a failure, if it ever will stop or what it is at all. All I can say it´s so annoying that I stay away from my iMac, because the process steals up to 100% CPU capacity, so working on that machine is hard to do.
Is there anybody who can tell me more about - or if and how I can stop this, because I need to do some jobs now.
Any help is much appreciated. Thanks in advance and have a nice day.
Cheers
F.

You can also try going to your user library folder in your user/home folder. Select Preferences/
com.apple.finder.plist. Move the .plist to your desktop.
Re-launch Finder by logging out/in and test. If it works okay, delete the plist from the desktop.
If the same, return the .plist to where you got it from, overwriting the newer ones.

Spotlight always indexes mac on startup

I've read several reports on Spotlight rebuilding indexes on startup. I found this issue on both my macs (with TIme Machine either on or off).
Here's what I've done trying to solve the problem:
1) I removed all of the spotlight indexes from all the disks and forced a re-index;
2) Removed all the *.mdimporter files from /Library/Spotlight
3) Erased all the system and application's caches with Onyx.
Are there any other solutions?

I don't mean to presume that all your guys' issues are related to this, but I am having this problem as well, and am quite sure it's due to a faulty logic board, and/or the inability of the machine to properly access RAM and other key components. My MBP 2.16, 1 GB constantly makes helicopter sounds that are emitted from the right speaker area. Apple replaced the first logic board in this machine while it was under warranty, and apparently put another defective one in. Overall, Apple hasn't been to helpful since.

Spotlight not indexing after hard drive replaced

Hi all
Just wondering if anyone knows how to encourage Spotlight to re-index? Just had my hard drive replaced as part of the recall, and now Spotlight wont index anything.
I've tried previous suggestions (adding and removing hard drive to privacy list, commands through terminal etc), but it's still not working. All the software is up to date (10.7.5).
Any ideas? It's incredibly annoying, and making working on this computer virtually impossible at the moment.
Cheers

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console 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 Console in the icon grid.
Step 1
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left.
Enter "mdworker" (without the quotes) in the Filter text field. Post the most recent 50 or so messages that appear in the Console window — the text, please, not a screenshot.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into a message.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — edit that out, too, but don’t remove the context.
Step 2
Do the same with the search string "mds".

Force Spotlight to Index a FW HDD

Hello!
Well, I recently aquired (as in 2 days ago) a Seagate 400GB FireWire/USB drive. I have it connected via FW.
Well, after formatting it to Mac Extended format, I partitioned it for a 60G section (intended for a secondary boot volume) and a 320 GB volume.
Yesterday, I coppied all 6 gig of data from our old G4's hard drive. Tonight, I want to look for a couple of files - but spotlight hasn't indexed anything - so not even find will find the files.
How do you force spotlight to index a hard drive?
-Dan

To force a volume to index just drag it into the privacy window for a moment and then drag it out.
-mj
[email protected]

Spotlight still indexing after upgrading to 10.6.7

I upgraded my 3-1/2 year old black MacBook to OS X 10.6.7 the other day, and after I rebooted, Spotlight began indexing my drive and has been stuck at "Estimating index time" ever since.
Is this a known issue, or am I the only one?
I'm not sure why it started indexing again, but how can I get it to stop?

Hi,
Try to stop NAT, than start Setup Gateway Assistant again, may be help.
Note: you should be sure your firewall is in correct setup. My NAT some time stop and can not start again because of my firewall "open" much ports than nessesary.

How can I stop Spotlight from indexing external drives?

I work in an environment where we plugin several different costumer harddrives all day long as part of our working process. Often only to extract one file from a given drive. Therefore its annoying that Spotlight automatically starts indexing these drives, because it slows down everthing, but also because our windows costumers suddenly see these weird mac files on their drives, that are invisible to the macuser. The Privacy setting is not of much use, as its impossible to add oru costumers drives to the list - we simply don't know the drive until we see it.
How can spotlight stop indexing?

The Privacy option is okay for private users, but at work we receive alot of harddrives from costumers and we simply cannot spend the extra time waiting for a drive to be indexed every time it is connected. That drive may never be connected again as it belongs to a costumer, and it is impossible for us to add drives to the Privacy pane, because we do not know they exist before we see them infront of us. The ption to disable all external drives from being indexed would be great. Or that the indexing can be stopped in the spotlight menu, or that the indexing will not start until 10 minutes after the drive has been mounted - and only if the drive is inactive.

Stop Spotlight from indexing new drives

I know how to block a drive in Spotlight's privacy settings.
What I'm looking for is a way to stop Spotlight from indexing a drive every time I plug one in. I'm often connecting external drives for work & spotlight immediatley starts to index & I go in and add it to the blocked list in Spotlight> Privacy.
Is there a way to just have Spotlight NOT try to index a new drive?

Sorry, I missed that part.
Try this, add this file to the external drive.
touch /Volumes/name of the external drive/.metadata_never_index
This will add a file called .metadata_never_index to the root of that drive.
You can also disable spotlight
sudo mdutil -a -i off
To re-enable Spotlight:
sudo mdutil -a -i on

How to stop Spotlight from indexing backup drives

Is there any way to stop Spotlight from indexing backup drives?
Thanks

Yes, in Spotlight preferences there is an option to do this. I'm not on my Mac now, so I forget exactly where in Spotlight preferences it is. I believe there is a second tab that you have to click on, then click the "+" sign to add items to Exclude. Just add your backup drive.

IPhoto/Spotlight not indexing SOLUTION

For those iPhoto 6 users whoose comments and keywords not being indexed by Spotlight, here is the solution to your problem!
If you are getting * Parsing file: '~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/AlbumData.xml'
ERROR: syntax error (<key>PhotoCount</key>) when you try to manually index your iPhoto library with mdimport, this will solve your problem!
You can only have single-line comments on your photos:
- Create a smart album: "Comments... contains... [option][return]"
Note: press option+return with your keyboard... the box will appear blank
- The smart album should become populated with photos where you entered a comment containing a character return
- Click the ( i ) in the bottom left-hand corner to draw up the info for each file, and manually remove the character break until your smart alum is empty OR go to Photos -> Batch Change and enter a new comment. Make sure that "append" is UNCHECKED -- This will overwrite all of the comments.
Now, you must also make sure you only have single-line comments on your rolls:
- From the iPhoto Library, go to View -> Sort Photos -> By Film Roll
- Hold the Apple (command) key, and click the drop down triangle once or twice (until all are collapsed)
- Manually examine each roll and make sure that the comments (if any) are all on one line.
Note: If the comments are all on one line, the whole line will be visible in the collapsed view under the Film Roll name
Quit iPhoto
Open Terminal (in the Utilities folder)
- Type mdimport -f ~/Pictures and hit return
- After some time, a message should come up saying:
* Parsing file: '~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/AlbumData.xml'
As long as there is not an error message underneath, this is good!
- When the command has finished running and you're at a blank prompt again, quit Terminal
Open iPhoto
- Click iPhoto in the menu bar, and go to Preferences
- Click the Keywords tab
- Click the "+" and create a new keyword called Spotlight
- Close out of iPhoto preferences
- From the iPhoto Library, select all of the photos (Edit -> Select All)
- Get info on the files (Photos -> Get Info)
- Select the Keywords tab
- CHECK the box that says [Spotlight] *THIS MIGHT TAKE A WHILE
- UNCHECK the box that says [Spotlight] * THIS MIGHT TAKE A WHILE
Note: This forces all of the pictures to be updated in the database
- Quit iPhoto
Search for your comments and keywords with Spotlight

Can I ask, does this need to be done every time you add photos to iPhoto, or is this a one-off trick to get Spotlight to look at iPhoto keywords in the first place?
My first experience with iPhoto is iPhoto6 so I don't have any baggage that I am bringing from earlier copies of iPhoto. I've imported in 1500 photos and am working my way through tagging them with keywords and am hoping that spotlight will index them. Is this bug related to keywords applied in older versions of iPhoto, or does the issue manifest itself even on a brand new library? Are Apple looking to patch iPhoto / Spotlight to resolve this?
Thanks.
Graham

IPhoto/Spotlight not indexing SOLUTION *edit

For those iPhoto 6 users whoose comments and keywords not being indexed by Spotlight, here is the solution to your problem!
If you are getting * Parsing file: '~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/AlbumData.xml'
ERROR: syntax error (<key>PhotoCount</key>) when you try to manually index your iPhoto library with mdimport, this will solve your problem!
You can only have single-line comments on your photos:
- Create a smart album: "Comments... contains... [option][return]"
Note: press option+return with your keyboard... the box will appear blank
- The smart album should become populated with photos where you entered a comment containing a character return
- Click the ( i ) in the bottom left-hand corner to draw up the info for each file, and manually remove the character break until your smart alum is empty OR go to Photos -> Batch Change and enter a new comment. Make sure that "append" is UNCHECKED -- This will overwrite all of the comments.
Now, you must also make sure you only have single-line comments on your rolls:
- From the iPhoto Library, go to View -> Sort Photos -> By Film Roll
- Hold the Apple (command) key, and click the drop down triangle once or twice (until all are collapsed)
- Manually examine each roll and make sure that the comments (if any) are all on one line.
Note: If the comments are all on one line, the whole line will be visible in the collapsed view under the Film Roll name
Quit iPhoto
Open Terminal (in the Utilities folder)
- Type mdimport -f ~/Pictures and hit return
- After some time, a message should come up saying:
* Parsing file: '~/Pictures/iPhoto Library/AlbumData.xml'
As long as there is not an error message underneath, this is good!
- When the command has finished running and you're at a blank prompt again, quit Terminal
Open iPhoto
- Click iPhoto in the menu bar, and go to Preferences
- Click the Keywords tab
- Click the "+" and create a new keyword called Spotlight
- Close out of iPhoto preferences
- From the iPhoto Library, select all of the photos (Edit -> Select All)
- Get info on the files (Photos -> Get Info)
- Select the Keywords tab
- CHECK the box that says [Spotlight] *THIS MIGHT TAKE A WHILE
- UNCHECK the box that says [Spotlight] * THIS MIGHT TAKE A WHILE
Note: This forces all of the pictures to be updated in the database
- Quit iPhoto
Search for your comments and keywords with Spotlight

Can I ask, does this need to be done every time you add photos to iPhoto, or is this a one-off trick to get Spotlight to look at iPhoto keywords in the first place?
My first experience with iPhoto is iPhoto6 so I don't have any baggage that I am bringing from earlier copies of iPhoto. I've imported in 1500 photos and am working my way through tagging them with keywords and am hoping that spotlight will index them. Is this bug related to keywords applied in older versions of iPhoto, or does the issue manifest itself even on a brand new library? Are Apple looking to patch iPhoto / Spotlight to resolve this?
Thanks.
Graham

Spotlight constantly indexing

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