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.

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Hello,
I'm seeing the same kind of problem. Here are the symptoms:
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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

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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MacBook Pro 13in. Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz (mid 2010)
4GB RAM
OSX 10.6.8
iTunes 11.4
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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)

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Hi there,
I have a problem with spotlight indexing.
It fails on me in a number of different ways.
Sometimes, when I try to reindex, it will never finish (Estimating indexing time... appears forever).
Sometimes, when I try to reindex, it will never finish (100 hours left ... appears forever).
Sometimes, it finisches indexing, but will not index any new file that I create,
or find out that I actually changed the location or the content of some of the already indexed files.
I write sometimes, because I really did not find out when happens when.
I tried everything available on the internet of course:
Reindexing by adding/removing the entire harddisk from the privacy tab,
using the commandline tools
mdutil -i off /
mdutil -E
mdutil -i on /
removing /.Spotlight-V100
in a number of combinations,
unmounting the disk, booting with an external disk, then mounting and repairing the disk,
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resetting the pram/nvram of my macbook pro early 2008,
adding a huge number of folders to the privacy tab before starting to index,
then slowly removing them...
Nothing helped.
I am absolutely stuck.
No hint on the internet how one could lead spotlight to reindex just a specific part of the
filesystem. No hint how spotlight behaves and why.
Every help appreciated.

Thanks Tony,
You are right, these are pages explaining a bit how it works.
However, my special problem seems to be that spotlight, at some point,
stops indexing. And I did not find out which is the switch that tells
the spotlight indexing machine to restart indexing when a new file is created or an old one is changed, or to continue indexing yet unknown files. It seems to me that this is somehow the fundamental thing that's broken in my case.
When doing what you propose (as I already wrote above), spotlight does start
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I rebuilt the .Spotlight-V100 folder including the subfolder which I copied from a working (searchable external harddisk) which I initially deleted in my trial to get Spotlight working again.
After a lot of tinkering with mdutil, Cocktail (a superb OS X system utility) and the Spotlight preference panel the overal problem for Spotlight might have been that I have got the internal and the Windows partition named starting the same name "Aristoteles" then a "blank" and the "HD" on the OS X partition and "WinXP" on the Windows partition. Obviously that got Spotlight confused because when I specifically excluded the windows partition (using the Spotlight preferences panel) and reactivated the remaining OS X partition using the "sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/Internal" command (I renamed the OS X disk partition from "Aristoteles" to "Internal") ... bang Spotlight kicked in ... but the strange thing is that Spotlight kicked in telling me it is searching the OS X partition "Aristoteles" instead of "Internal".
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Message was edited by: OlympusUser

Spotlight doesn't stop indexing

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