Spotlight Indexing Problem

I've been scouring the internet looking in forum after forum for the answer to this problem for several hours now. I've tried all the usual fixes (which I will detail below) and none of them seem to be working.
I recently installed Leopard from Tiger on my MacBook. Since then I've been having a problem with Spotlight hanging while it's indexing. It gets about 80% of the way through before it starts hanging. I have no external hard drives connected (and therefore have not begun using Time Machine).
I Repaired Disk Permissions and booted up from the install disc and Repaired Disk.
I opened Terminal and entered +sudo mdutil -E /+ which restarted Spotlight indexing, but the problem arose again.
I added my entire hard drive to the Privacy list within Spotlight options. Spotlight stopped indexing (as would be expected). When I removed my hard drive from the Privacy list, the problem arose again.
Now, I have told Spotlight not to index any of the categories within Spotlight preferences. I will add each category in, one-by-one. This is currently taking place, and I will add posts as progress persists.
Can anyone help? I would really appreciate any kind of assistance in this matter.

I've been seeing the exact same problem and have posted queries with no solution. Currently my status is that I have switched off Spotlight indexing with an app called Spotless and am using EasyFind as my search tool. This is far from satisfactory though, as Spotlight is embedded inside many Apple apps as the search tool (Mail, for instance) and EasyFind doesn't replicate the function of searching inside apps. Since I rely on searching my mail more often than anything else on my drives, I'm not happy.
Spotlight has failed on both my my MacBook Pro and also my dual quad MacPro, despite my having done complete clean installs on both these machines. I've tried a process of elimination to attempt to find the file/files that are the culprit for the indexing hangs but it is a tedious and indefinite process, principally because it's impossible to know exactly when Spotlight gets hung up (I basically just have to listen for my fans to spin up watch the Activity Monitor for mds taking over the CPU). The console logs are almost no help in trying to find out what's going on, as they seem only to register the problem after I have quit Console and relaunched it (ie, they are not seeing the process hang as it happens).
One thing that may help you (although it didn't help me) is that Spotless allows you to delete old indexes created under earlier systems, that, as I understand it, may hang around through the install of 10.5 and interfere with new indexing.

Similar Messages

Continued Spotlight Indexing Problems

I'm still having problems with Spotlight indexing my drives into infinity. I just had a new 320g drive installed on my machine and, as I've posted before, Spotlight went ballistic trying to index it, telling me it had "2147483648 hours remaining" to complete indexing. As before, Activity Monitor shows mds taking over the system, hogging nearly 100% of the processor and causing the fan on my MacBook to go into overdrive.
As before, the only solution seems to be to shut Spotlight down completely. Using Spotless caused a freeze at first, and I had to reboot it and try again.
Does anybody know why this problem is so persistent? I've also noticed that Spotlight does not seem to search inside System Libraries any longer. Can anyone else verify this?

I'm having the same problem as well. I got a tool called Spotless. Which wasn't much help. I even deleted the index completely, restarted it and it still indexed ad infinitum. I think there's a problem with certain filenames or filetypes where it just chokes. Instead of crashing or erroring, it just stalls and keeps going. I'm trying to index my disks one at a time. But my system disk is the problem I think.

Lion Spotlight Indexing Problems temporarily hanging all other apps

Has anyone else had problems with Lion's spotlight indexing causing all other applications to spuratically / temporarily not respond?
Is there a way to turn off the indexing on startup and only kick it off manually?
Also, everytime I boot, it runs fsck causing boot / restart to take a long time.
Is there a way to disable this?

Ended up deleting the spotlight database and rebooted. Seemed to fix spotlight issue.
I am still having slow boot issues with fsck running at every boot however.

Must the Time Machine volume be Spotlight indexed?

There are conflicting forum posts on this issue. Some say Time Machine requires that the Time Machine backup volume be included in the Spotlight indexing prefs. Some say TM works fine when excluded from Spotlight indexing.
I've also not found a definitive answer by searching Support.
Any advice would be appreciated!

I'm happy to find this thread, because for a few weeks I (and others in various threads) have been experiencing a bug where Spotlight continuously indexes *_for days and weeks on end._*
Thanks to this thread, I now believe that the root of this issue is that for some reason, Spotlight has started to index my Time Machine drive. I'm glad to read, here, that it's not necessary for Spotlight to index one's TM drive. However, what was not mentioned here is exactly how one excludes the TM drive from being indexed!
When I attempt to do so via Spotlight's preference pane (in the "Privacy" tab), I get an error saying the drive "couldn't be added."
UPDATE: Before posting this I tried dragging the TM drive's icon to the Spotlight preference pane, and that worked. Technically there's no difference between doing it that way or clicking the "plus" sign and navigating to the drive to be excluded, so I'm not sure why that didn't work. But I'm just reporting my experience. Hopefully this will solve my never-ending spotlight-indexing problem.
UPDATE #2: Problem not solved. Spotlight is still indexing the TM drive. Apparently, adding that drive to the the Privacy pane only affects search results, not indexing.
_How does one prevent a drive from being indexed?_

Problem with Pages/SpotLight index

Hi
I posted a question regarding a problem I am having using "Open existing files" in Pages. The thread is called "Can't find pages files".
After some responses I was asked to use Onyx to rebuild the spotlight index. However the problem was fixed on the first search but soon returned back. One of the posters said that it seems that something on my system is clobbering the Spotlight index. He says I may require a clean system install to get rid of the issue. However before doing so, he suggested I ask in the forum dedicated to _Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard _
Can anyone help?
Thanks,
Raffaele

If you want to report this issue to Apple's engineering, send a bug report or an enhancement request via its Bug Reporter system. To do this, join the Mac Developer Program—it's free and available for all Mac users and gets you a look at some development software. Since you already have an Apple username/ID, use that. Once a member, go to Apple BugReporter and file your bug report or enhancement request. The nice thing with this procedure over submitting feedback is that you get a response and a follow-up number; thus, starting a dialog with engineering.

Mountain Lion: problem with Time Machine directories and spotlight indexing

I'm using a fresh install of 10.8 Mountain Lion on a 2011 MBP. It's a work laptop with many ASCII files containing numerical data (floating point numbers), with varying file extensions. Some of the files are multi-gig, some are only a few hundred K, and there are tens of thousands of them. Roughly 500G of numerical data.
I can disable spotlight from indexing certain subdirectories of my home directory on the local drive. However, when using Time Machine to backup, I seem to be entirely unable to prevent spotlight from attemping to fully index the external drive (Time Machine volume). I actually let spotlight run for over 36 hours this weekend in a futile attempt for it to finish indexing the TM volume. The /.Spotlight-V100 index on the external drive is roughly 100G and continuously written and overwritten. /var/log/system.log had various "Merging failed" messages for temp spotlight files. I deleted the index, let spotlight run again overnight, but it did not finish indexing. "sudo fs_usage -f filesys mds mdworker mdimport mdworker32 | grep open" showed spotlight slowly chugging through the thousands of numerical files.
I believe the problem is related to this old report from someone who noticed a leopard -> snow leopard change:
http://hintsforums.macworld.com/showthread.php?t=106703
http://forums.cnet.com/7723-6126_102-366184/snow-leopard-10-6-spotlight-indexing -and-disk-usage/
However, I don't see an easy solution. In ML, if you drag the TM volume to the spotlight privacy list it gives you a message about how you can't disable indexing of TM volumes because it's essential for TM. I have not yet tried to manually put in some kind of .metadata_never_index file in the relevant TM volume directories (I am not sure if that will do anything, or perhaps break TM backups), but that's one possible next step.
Anyone have ideas on how I can have my TM backups work but the spotlight indexing of all these data files (their subdirectories) disabled? I'm not specifically TRYING to back up those data files with TM (they're duplicated elsewhere), they're just on the same machine as a bunch of other stuff I need backed up via TM. Apple has a disaster on their hands for anyone trying to backup a machine which also has large data sets.

I'm not aware of any avenue to tell spotlight to not index all or part of a backup.
However, the indexing should work, even if takes a long time.
I don't think this is a new issue and has been part of TM from the start.
Realistically, it may be time to consider whether TM is the best choice for these data files?
Are they very volatile do they change frequently both as to content of individual files and total set of files?
If not, then a clone or syncing type of backup might be better suited for these files.
I do not back up all my files via time machine. I keep photographs and music outside of Time Machine. to be sure they are backed up but via clones.
To show why this might the best take photographs. My photographs are basically immutable once they enter the system, but I may come back with 5000 images from a trip and whittle that down to a few hundred eventually. This would cause a lot of files to be saved in TM that are no longer wanted, - but are not easy to remove formthe backup. while the ones I want haven't changed. TM is not geared to make handling that easily.
As a further aside, ideally one should back everything of value up twice via 2 different means.
I've had backup drives fail.I've had TM logically fail (disk is fine -TM internal data structures bad).

Spotlight Indexing still a problem

I have read several threads on this and have tried a number of fixes including adding hard drive to privacy section in Spotlight system preferences and then forcing re-index by removing the HD from the privacy section, removing the import filters from the Spotlight prefs, and running OnyX utilities. Spotlight still will not finish indexing. It begins, shows time remaining, counts down (24 mins, 17 mins, 9 mins, etc) and then just stalls before finishing. I have left it for 2 days and it never finishes. In order to free-up the processor, I have disabled indexing now by putting HD in the privacy section, but would really like to be able to use Spotlight. Any ideas?

I followed your suggestion and if I understand correctly, that just disabled indexing and serching for the root drive. I no longer had Spotlight serch ability. I then went back into Terminal and typed:
sudo mdutil -i on /
This re-enabled Spotlight, but still have the never-ending indexing problem. If it is in fact a corrupt index, how can I delete the index and create a new fresh one. Is it possible that the index is fine and there is a corrupt file that Spotlight is trying to index? If so, how to find it?

Re: Spotlight indexing behaviour problem

Hi,
My .Spotlight-V100 problem is in relation with network users. We have an xServe in the office with multiple users. When somebody logins from an iMac with a network user the spotlight starts to reindex the whole database. Every time somebody logs out then in, the spotlight rebuilds the index folder.
Is there any solution for this problem besides turning of the spotlight? We have to use the spotlight for searching in thousands of mails and it would be great if it could use the index folder without rebuild it every time the computer starts. I tried to solve the problem with fixing the permissions of the folder .Spotlight-V100 but it seems ok now, and the problem remains.
Thanks a lot in advanve.

I'm having the same problems too. Still searching for a solution.

How I solved my Spotlight+ Mail indexing problem

OK, so I thought I would post my solution to a stubborn indexing problem, for people who may have the same issue (and it does seem many people do).
Problem: Spotlight index was unreliable. In particular, Spotlight was terrible at indexing mail. It could not find the messages by content that it would find by searching the "from" field, nor could it find those reliably. Unusable.
What DID NOT work:
-- adding and removing any folder whatsoever in the Privacy preferences of Spotlight. The index would rebuild, but with the same problems.
-- doing this via terminal (e.g, using sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/MyHardDisk)
-- using Onyx
-- using Spotless
-- simply reinstalling the system
-- manually modifying the plist files inside the .spotlight folder to add and remove the folders that would not get indexed.
What DID work:
-- first, I reinstalled the system. That's not such a big deal. Upgrade up to 10.4.6
-- then, I authorized the root user (that's probably not necessary) (this, you do by using Netinfo manager)
-- Then, I deactivated the index (via terminal:
sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/MyHardDisk
-- now the tricky part. This concerns Mail, in particular.
I have a very complex mail folder (tens of thousands of messages). I noticed that inside each mail folder, I had two things that were not supposed to be there
1. a copy of each folder.mbox which was empty, but with the same name without the extension .mbox. This is probably something that was created while importing mail from Panther to Tiger, for what I can tell.
2. Most importantly, a file named ".index.ready". This also, apparently, was an old legacy coming from Panther. I suspect this was the main problem for the lack of indexing in Mail.
Ok, so... I deleted these folders and files. If you have a complex structure of subfolders, you can delete the files with an Unix command by first cd to your mail folder, and then use
find . -name \.index.r* -ok rm {} \;
which will ask you confirmation before deleting each file.
It was faster to remove the empty subfolders by hand, as they all had different names.
-- Ok, at this point, I erased entirely the .Spotlight-V100 directory which stays at the root of your computer. You can do it with a rmdir command from the terminal or, as I did, you can login as root (remember, we activated root), use a utility that allows you to see hidden files (e.g., Tinkertool), and move it manually to the trash folder.
Then I emptied the trash. For superstition, I restarted, and let the index be built again (that took about 5 hours in my computer, for an HD with about 60 gb occupied on it).
Now everything seems to work perfectly fine. I don't know whether this procedure can be shortened, but I do know that nothing else worked for me. I thought I would post it here as I spent sooo much time to solve this problem, and furthermore, I found that none of the suggested solutions would work.
OK, your responsibility to do it, if you want to do it. Hope nobody needs to!
Best to you all,
l.
Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Lucabo! Using ideas from your post, I also (at least for now) solved my Mail indexing problem. One day (not even after an upgrade) Mail just quit finding messages by content, even when I had open a message with that content!
What I did:
-- In System Preferences, told Spotlight to index only Mail (I just use grep from a Terminal window for everything else!)
-- Ensured Mail app wasn't running
-- Backed up my Library/Mail folder to an external disk
-- Turned off indexing via Terminal (after sudo sh), with
mdutil -i off /Volumes/MyHardDisk
-- Deleted old files in my mailboxes (inside the whatever.mbox folders):
.index.ready
mbox
tableofcontents
content_index
It was clear that mbox, tableofcontents, and content_index were left over from a previous version of mail - they hadn't been accessed since I upgraded.
Note that I didn't delete the whatever.mbox folders (just the plain mbox file inside)!
-- Deleted (in Terminal) the .Spotlight-V100 in the root directory
-- Restarted my Mac. The indexing started itself. Since I had it set up to index only Mail, it took about 3-ish hours to finish (I have 100s of 1000s of emails in thousands of folders).
After the indexing finished, all the test searches that I tried worked. From now on I will always be suspicious if search doesn't find anything!
Also, I just checked - using the Spotlight field on the menu bar now works better too. When the Mail search problem showed up, I tried using the Spotlight field and the Spotlight window, but they would just flash up a few items, remove the list, over and over, sometimes with the beachball, then finally settle to an empty list. Now the Spotlight field seems to work.
I infer that the Spotlight index gets corrupted, and that the Spotlight code doesn't notice that it's reading junk from the index...
BTW, about the same time that search quit working, some emails in my Inboxes got highlighted with a dark brown background color. Have no idea why. They aren't marked as Junk (the junk messages have the text in the usual lighter brown). But, when I select a message with the dark brown highlight, mark it as junk, then mark it as not junk, the dark brown highlight goes away. On some occasions, just quitting Mail and restarting makes the dark brown highlights go away - but not always. Sigh... at least it's not a show stopper, even if it is ugly!
Thanks again, Lucabo, for your post!
Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Spotlight Indexing, Systemstats, Missing File, All After Mavericks Upgrade

Dear Mac Support Communities,
The upgrade to OS X 10.9.4 has crippled my computer.
My main question is: should I reformat, or should I wait for a patch to come out to solve whatever is wrong with Mavericks? I explain below.
Spotlight is constantly indexing. The mdworker is all over the place on the Activity Monitor—4% and then it explodes to 85% of CPU usage. Systemstats kicks in randomly (connected to spotlight perhaps?) and eats up 90% of my CPU and 3gigs of RAM. Time Machine takes AGES to backup.
I have not been able to stop Spotlight's endless indexing. I have moved my hard drive and my Time Machine backup into the 'private' filter in 'Spotlight Preferences.' I have also tried the "sudo mdutil -a -i off" trick to stop indexing altogether. But Spotlight Indexing goes "off" and then automatically turns "on" in Terminal. Spotlight carries on, and the computer performance is choppy.
I've run disk repair. First, I repaired permissions. Then I verified and attempted to repair the the hard drive. There is a missing file apparently, and I therefore must reformat. This is very first issue I've ever had with the hard drive since I bought the computer. Considering how awful Mavericks has been—I have been reading other Support Communities posts—I'm nervous about something going wrong, or that all these problems will persist after the reformat.
All of this has occurred three days after my upgrade to to OS X 10.9.4. I have heard of numerous people having problems with Mavericks. All similar problems concerning missing files, haywire spotlight, systemstats devouring any remaining CPU power and memory space, and slow Time Machine back-ups.
Anyone with the same problems? Care to theorize some solutions?
I have a late 2008, 15inch MacBook Pro., 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3, running OS X 10.9.4 (13E28).
Cheers! I appreciate the help.

Older Macs have more troubles under Mavericks. Considering the age of your Mac, it's not uncommon to start have hardware issues like drive failure.
To repair the drive you must boot from the Recovery Drive.
Boot into the Recovery Drive by holding down Command R when restarting.
Run Repair Drive and Repair Permissions using Disk Utility in Recovery.***
Next Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs following directions here This will serve two purposes. It will reset YOUR permissions. Not the same as Disk Utility reset permissions and it will cause Spotlight to re-index your drive when restarting.
Restart
Download and run the combo updater to refresh your OS X files.
OS X Mavericks 10.9.4 Update (Combo)
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1755
MORE INFO ON WHY RUNNING COMBO FIXES ISSUES
Apple updates available from the Software Update application are incremental updates. Delta updates are also incremental updates and are available from Apple Downloads (software updates are generally smaller than delta updates). The Combo updates contain all incremental updates and will update files that could have become corrupted.
Combo updaters will install on the same version as they're applying--no need to roll back or do a clean install.
"Delta" updaters can only take you from one version to the next. For example: 10.9.3 to 10.9.4. If somehow the 10.9.3 is missing something it should have, and that something isn't changed between 10.9.3 and 10.9.4 it will still be stale after the delta update.
***If Disk Utility is unable to repair you will have to copy your data to an external drive first. Reformatting will erase the drive. You should have a backup regardless, if your data is important to you. Just like a seat belt and an air bag protect you in different ways when driving, you need both Time Machine and a clone for full protection. If you don't have an external drive for backup, I can give you some suggestions to get you started.
Both of these applications can be used to create a clone.
SuperDuper! http://www.shirt-pocket.com/
CCC http://www.bombich.com/download.html

Lost the ability to Spotlight Index my Time Machine drive

I have an external, Firewire Time Machine drive which has been working without problems up to now. This evening I had a backup which hung up in the "preparing" stage (no file transfers begun yet). When I went to look in the console, there was a device error apparently related to trying to detect the powered-on state of my Time Machine drive. Apparently Time Machine did not handle this gracefully. In the course of trying to clear that I got into a state where I had to force shutdown of the system (holding the power button). (I accidentally clicked on the Time Machine icon which got hung up trying to display the histories, and left me with no access to the Desktop....)
Things appeared to check out fine when I brought the machine back up (including Verify Disk of both the main and Time Machine drives and Repair Permissions of the main drive), and I finally did a Back Up Now in Time Machine. Due to the forced shut down, this became a "Deep Traversal" "preparing"stage. We'll I've seen those before, so no worries. However it lasted quite a bit longer than it should, at which point I noticed that Spotlight was indexing the Time Machine drive.
So at this point I dragged the Time Machine into the Spotlight Privacy list. Rather than going away completely as I expected, the indexing of the Time Machine drive apparently went into some sort of clean-up phase that said it was still indexing for another 5 minutes (where it had, just prior, said it was going to be indexing for another 2 hours). The progress bar advanced normally as if it really did do 5 minutes more of indexing of the Time Machine drive. I've not seen this before
When that finished, the backup which had been "preparing" during all of this also finished "preparing", transferred the several MB of files I expected, and finished normally. There were no errors in the console related to any of this.
I rebooted, and once again did a pair of Disk Verifies and a Repair Permissions without problems. Opened up the console to track things, and poked around in the Time Machine. All was normal as far as I can tell. I also explored the Time Machine drive via the Finder. No problems.
So I now went into Spotlight Privacy and removed the Time Machine drive from the privacy list expecting it to do the re-indexing I had stopped above. Spotlight started indexing the drive and a couple seconds later it stopped. I tried again -- into and out of privacy -- same result, a couple seconds of indexing and then it stopped.
At this point I noticed the console was saying I had some bus errors in the I/O system, and that's what was terminating the md worker process and stopping the indexing.
So I shut down, unplugged the Time Machine drive, and went through my maintenance ritual.
I reset the PMU (this is a powerbook), reset PRAM, booted once in Safe Mode, booted normally, and ran Disk Utility again to Verify and Repair Permissions on the main hard drive. All of that went without a hitch. No failures, faults or funnies.
I ran through the list of Applications I use, keeping an eye on the console. Again no problems.
So I shut down, plugged the Time Machine drive back in and booted back up. I put the drive into Spotlight Privacy and turned off Time Machine backups. I then did a Verify Disk on that drive. No problems. I went into the Time Machine history display. No problems. And no problems looking at it in the Finder either. In particular, no bus errors or anything else funny in the console.
I rebooted and did a new Back Up Now. It completed without problems. It was another Deep Traversal backup due to the Safe Mode Boot, but it went without a hitch. I rebooted and did another Back Up Now and got a normal speed incremental backup again without a hitch. The bottom line is that as far as I can see that Time Machine drive is working just fine.
So I went into Spotlight Privacy and removed it from the list. Once again it started to index and stopped in a couple seconds. But this time there were NO Console error messages.
I moved my main hard drive into Spotlight Privacy and removed it and it re-indexed from scratch just fine. Tried again with the Time Machine drive -- indexing stopped in a couple of seconds with no message in the Console. Spotlight searches find all the right stuff in the main drive. Spotlight and finder searches find only the top level Time Machine folders in the Time Machine drive.
I also tried removing the Spotlight plist from my account's Library / Preferences. Spotlight created a new plist as expected but it still won't index that darned Time Machine drive.
Apparently there is something left over from when I originally aborted the Spotlight indexing of that drive which is causing Spotlight to think it has no work to do. I'm not seeing any I/O errors of any sort any more (I think my maintenance pass took care of that) and Time Machine backups and history access continue to work just fine. And again, the Time Machine disk Verifies just fine.
So I've run out of things to try.
Is there a hidden file that I need to remove from that drive so that Spotlight no longer thinks it already has it indexed?
--Bob

Well unfortunately the command
sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/MyDiskName
didn't help.
The command itself echoed the name of the volume and then said "Indexing Enabled", which looked good. But the Spotlight indexing stopped after a couple seconds. The Console reported the Terminal sudo command and nothing else.
I tried moving the Time Machine drive in and out of Spotlight privacy and once again the indexing started and stopped a couple seconds later with no Console messages.
I then tried another trick I've learned to make Spotlight indexing happen which is to do a Finder search for, say, all folders (limited to the one drive) via Command-f and while Including both System Files and files both Visible and Invisible. And indeed Spotlight indexing started but again stopped a few seconds later.
However, this time there were console messages and a crash report.
The Console shows (with personal information x'ed out):
12/31/07 1:30:38 PM mds[28] (/)(Error) IndexCI in openindex_filelazy:open file error: 2, 0.indexGroups
12/31/07 1:30:41 PM ReportCrash[146] Formulating crash report for process mds[28]
12/31/07 1:30:42 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.metadata.mds[28]) Exited abnormally: Bus error
12/31/07 1:30:42 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10ba40.mdworker[96]) Exited: Terminated
12/31/07 1:30:42 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (0x1004a0.mdworker[108]) Exited: Terminated
12/31/07 1:30:42 PM mds[147] (/Volumes/Xxxxxx Time Machine/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/80F3EC85-D77A-49FE-8BDC-BB7C3B3EC1CF)(E rror) IndexCI in ContentIndexOpenBulk:Unclean shutdown of /Volumes/Xxxxxx Time Machine/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V1/Stores/80F3EC85-D77A-49FE-8BDC-BB7C3B3EC1CF/0. ; needs recovery
12/31/07 1:30:43 PM ReportCrash[146] Saved crashreport to /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/mds2007-12-31-133038Xxxxxx-Xxxxxx-Computer.crash using uid: 0 gid: 0, euid: 0 egid: 0
The Crash Report reads as follows (again with personal information x'ed out):
Process: mds [28]
Path: /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/Metadata.framework /Support/mds
Identifier: mds
Version: ??? (???)
Code Type: PPC (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [1]
Date/Time: 2007-12-31 13:30:38.746 -0500
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.5.1 (9B18)
Report Version: 6
Exception Type: EXCBADACCESS (SIGBUS)
Exception Codes: KERNPROTECTIONFAILURE at 0x0000000000000030
Crashed Thread: 15
Thread 0:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0000cfa0 0x1000 + 49056
5 mds 0x00005580 0x1000 + 17792
Thread 1:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0005987c 0x1000 + 362620
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x969c5d9c _NSThread__main_ + 1004
6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 2:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0005987c 0x1000 + 362620
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x969c5d9c _NSThread__main_ + 1004
6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 3:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0005987c 0x1000 + 362620
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x969c5d9c _NSThread__main_ + 1004
6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 4:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0005987c 0x1000 + 362620
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x969c5d9c _NSThread__main_ + 1004
6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 5:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0005987c 0x1000 + 362620
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x969c5d9c _NSThread__main_ + 1004
6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 6:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda3ec _semwaitsignal + 12
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f16fa0 pthread_condwait + 1580
2 mds 0x00009648 0x1000 + 34376
3 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 7:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ee0ea0 read$UNIX2003 + 12
1 mds 0x000091b4 0x1000 + 33204
Thread 8:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15438 kevent + 12
1 mds 0x0007e584 0x1000 + 513412
Thread 9:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0005987c 0x1000 + 362620
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x969c5d9c _NSThread__main_ + 1004
6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 10:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0005987c 0x1000 + 362620
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x969c5d9c _NSThread__main_ + 1004
6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 11:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0005987c 0x1000 + 362620
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x969c5d9c _NSThread__main_ + 1004
6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 12:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0005987c 0x1000 + 362620
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x969c5d9c _NSThread__main_ + 1004
6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 13:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x00207f0c _handleExceptions + 208
3 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 14:
0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92ed39d8 machmsgtrap + 8
1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92eda8fc mach_msg + 56
2 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x90214664 CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 1828
3 mds 0x00059ab8 0x1000 + 363192
4 mds 0x0005987c 0x1000 + 362620
5 com.apple.Foundation 0x969c5d9c _NSThread__main_ + 1004
6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 15 Crashed:
0 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x002046cc ContentIndexContainsContentByDocId + 204
1 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x00164358 QueryFunctionCallbackContext::findContent(db_obj*, __CFString const*, char*, int) + 244
2 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x001634d0 qpContentIndexMatch(datastoreinfo*, dblazyobj*, query_piece*, void*, int) + 328
3 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x0015587c comparefile_againsttree + 828
4 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x00155d30 comparefile_againsttree + 2032
5 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x00155d5c comparefile_againsttree + 2076
6 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x001e307c -[SISearchCtx isObjectInQuery:withQuery:shortcut:] + 144
7 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x001fa268 -[SISearchCtx_FSWalk performSearch:] + 996
8 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x001e2cbc -[SISearchCtx executeSearchContextCracked_2:jobNum:] + 136
9 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x00177e80 siwork_queueprocess + 752
10 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x0017811c sischeduleronce + 356
11 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x0017816c sischeduleronce + 436
12 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x001784f8 sischeduler_run_waitingtimeout + 640
13 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x0016529c runLoop + 72
14 com.apple.spotlight.index 0x00165308 query_runLoop + 32
15 libSystem.B.dylib 0x92f15bf8 pthreadstart + 316
Thread 15 crashed with PPC Thread State 32:
srr0: 0x002046cc srr1: 0x0200f030 dar: 0x00000030 dsisr: 0x40000000
r0: 0x002046a4 r1: 0xf09a4380 r2: 0x00000000 r3: 0x00000000
r4: 0xf09a43c0 r5: 0x00000000 r6: 0x000074d1 r7: 0x00000000
r8: 0x003fc080 r9: 0x00000000 r10: 0x00000000 r11: 0x44000444
r12: 0x92ede094 r13: 0x00000000 r14: 0x00000000 r15: 0x00373410
r16: 0x00000000 r17: 0x00239e98 r18: 0x00000001 r19: 0x00227b9c
r20: 0x00000000 r21: 0x00245554 r22: 0x00000001 r23: 0x00000001
r24: 0x00000000 r25: 0x00000005 r26: 0x00000000 r27: 0x00000000
r28: 0x00000000 r29: 0x00000005 r30: 0xf09a43c0 r31: 0x00204610
cr: 0x24000444 xer: 0x20000004 lr: 0x002046a4 ctr: 0x92ede094
vrsave: 0x00000000
Binary Images:
0x1000 - 0xc1ffb mds ??? (???) <af9cc958b4b030835101ff024186c7d3> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/Metadata.framework /Support/mds
0xde000 - 0xe0ffd com.apple.MDSChannel 1.0 (1.0) /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MDSChannel.framework/Versions/A/MDSChannel
0x139000 - 0x23fffb com.apple.spotlight.index 10.5.0 (398.1) <5843125c709dd85f22f9bd42744beea5> /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/SpotlightIndex.framework/Versions/A/Spotlight Index
0x1ca9000 - 0x1caaffc liblangid.dylib ??? (???) <5f078ac1f623f5ce432ea53fc29338c0> /usr/lib/liblangid.dylib
0x2198000 - 0x22bdffb libmecab.1.0.0.dylib ??? (???) <cd875e74974e4ec3a0b13eeeb236fa53> /usr/lib/libmecab.1.0.0.dylib
0x8fe00000 - 0x8fe309d3 dyld 95.3 (???) <a7be977c203ec5c76b2f25a7aef66554> /usr/lib/dyld
0x90123000 - 0x9016effb com.apple.Metadata 10.5.0 (398) <b6bb1fd5a7a9135f546b2d8cbd65eafc> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/Metadat a.framework/Versions/A/Metadata
0x901ab000 - 0x902d0ff3 com.apple.CoreFoundation 6.5 (476) <9073c2bfdf6842562c8b7f0308109c02> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Versions/A/CoreFoundation
0x9060a000 - 0x90612fff libbsm.dylib ??? (???) <c1fca3cbe3b1c21e9b31bc89b920f34c> /usr/lib/libbsm.dylib
0x90683000 - 0x90688ff6 libmathCommon.A.dylib ??? (???) /usr/lib/system/libmathCommon.A.dylib
0x90757000 - 0x907d2fff com.apple.SearchKit 1.2.0 (1.2.0) <1b448fbae02460eae76ee1c6883f45d6> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/SearchK it.framework/Versions/A/SearchKit
0x9088a000 - 0x9090ffff libsqlite3.0.dylib ??? (???) <7b379cb4220346e99c32c427d4539496> /usr/lib/libsqlite3.0.dylib
0x90aa7000 - 0x90ab5fff libz.1.dylib ??? (???) <1a70dd3594a8c5ad39d785af5da23237> /usr/lib/libz.1.dylib
0x90b50000 - 0x90be2fff com.apple.framework.IOKit 1.5.1 (???) <591b8b0cc4261db98a6e72e38eef5f9a> /System/Library/Frameworks/IOKit.framework/Versions/A/IOKit
0x91105000 - 0x9116cffb libstdc++.6.dylib ??? (???) <a4e9b10268b3ffac26d0296499b24e8e> /usr/lib/libstdc++.6.dylib
0x9116d000 - 0x912b5ff3 libicucore.A.dylib ??? (???) <250daed2fb2e6bf114480e2e4da0728b> /usr/lib/libicucore.A.dylib
0x91c3c000 - 0x91d32ffc libiconv.2.dylib ??? (???) <05ae1fcc97404173b2f9caef8f8be797> /usr/lib/libiconv.2.dylib
0x91d3a000 - 0x91db4ffd com.apple.CFNetwork 220 (221) <00b882d3d3325526b78ded74880759fe> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/CFNetwo rk.framework/Versions/A/CFNetwork
0x9236a000 - 0x92382ffb com.apple.DictionaryServices 1.0.0 (1.0.0) <fe37191e732eeb66189185cd000a210b> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/Diction aryServices.framework/Versions/A/DictionaryServices
0x92383000 - 0x9238effb libgcc_s.1.dylib ??? (???) <ea47fd375407f162c76d14d64ba246cd> /usr/lib/libgcc_s.1.dylib
0x92742000 - 0x92769fff libxslt.1.dylib ??? (???) <3700d04090629deddb436aa2d516c56d> /usr/lib/libxslt.1.dylib
0x92777000 - 0x92860fff libxml2.2.dylib ??? (???) <6f383df1e1e775be0158ba947784ae13> /usr/lib/libxml2.2.dylib
0x928aa000 - 0x928b9fff com.apple.DSObjCWrappers.Framework 1.2 (1.2) <2411674c821a8907449ac741ce6a40c3> /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DSObjCWrappers.framework/Versions/A/DSObjCWra ppers
0x92a17000 - 0x92afafeb libobjc.A.dylib ??? (???) <4a90e315bd1718c3f5ae09ee6c23e36c> /usr/lib/libobjc.A.dylib
0x92afb000 - 0x92bc9ff7 com.apple.CoreServices.OSServices 210.2 (210.2) <bad4943629f870d305f2bc7c6dfffe2d> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/OSServi ces.framework/Versions/A/OSServices
0x92bde000 - 0x92dbfffb com.apple.security 5.0.1 (32736) <15632bf9bbdb223194b3d79a2e48e02d> /System/Library/Frameworks/Security.framework/Versions/A/Security
0x92e9a000 - 0x92ec5ff7 libauto.dylib ??? (???) <c1f2bd227817ad7c7bf29ec74729ac7c> /usr/lib/libauto.dylib
0x92ed2000 - 0x9306bfe3 libSystem.B.dylib ??? (???) <8a6cd873dfa7ada786efac188f95ed1b> /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
0x931a7000 - 0x934a7ff3 com.apple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 783 (783) <fd2acaf23e95472f78b8a077fa039986> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/CarbonC ore.framework/Versions/A/CarbonCore
0x946f2000 - 0x9472afff com.apple.SystemConfiguration 1.9.0 (1.9.0) <d925dde7699e6231c88a41b0254a7591> /System/Library/Frameworks/SystemConfiguration.framework/Versions/A/SystemConfi guration
0x94933000 - 0x9494eff3 com.apple.DirectoryService.Framework 3.5 (3.5) <3246a5d1c6a3d678798a90e8c5cd3677> /System/Library/Frameworks/DirectoryService.framework/Versions/A/DirectoryServi ce
0x9494f000 - 0x9494fffa com.apple.CoreServices 32 (32) <42b6dda539f7411606187335d9eae0c5> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/CoreServices
0x94c68000 - 0x94c9dfff com.apple.AE 402 (402) <a4b92c8ac89cc774b85fb44c48b9d882> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/AE.fram ework/Versions/A/AE
0x96831000 - 0x9683afff com.apple.DiskArbitration 2.2 (2.2) <9c8f8ade43fa25b32109ef9dcc0cb5d5> /System/Library/Frameworks/DiskArbitration.framework/Versions/A/DiskArbitration
0x9683b000 - 0x968d1ff7 com.apple.LaunchServices 286 (286) <a3a0b2af862e9a8945072f8cb523678f> /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchS ervices.framework/Versions/A/LaunchServices
0x969bc000 - 0x96c00ffb com.apple.Foundation 6.5.1 (677.1) <4152239382fb0f48abbcbf35bd04afa6> /System/Library/Frameworks/Foundation.framework/Versions/C/Foundation
0xfffec000 - 0xfffeffff libobjc.A.dylib ??? (???) /usr/lib/libobjc.A.dylib
0xffff8000 - 0xffff9703 libSystem.B.dylib ??? (???) /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
Apparently the mdutil command didn't actually delete the Spotlight index file which is causing the problem, or at least didn't leave the indexing files in a consistent, empty state to start indexing over again. I may have to Erase this Time Machine disk and start over.
I should point out that except for Spotlight indexing this disk is otherwise working just fine. It passes Verify Disk with no errors and both new Time Machine backups and viewing and restoring via Time Machine and Finder work without problem.
Any suggestions before I just Erase the disk and start over with a new backup?
--Bob

Spotlight index unreliable on removable volumes

I have a removable drive that I want to index with Spotlight. As long as the drive is connected, Spotlight indexes the drive correctly.
If I unmounted the drive, disconnected it, and reconnected it, Spotlight will not "see" the index in that volume any more--none of the hits in that volume will be returned by the Spotlight search.
AFAIK the hidden Spotlight folders (.DS_Store and .Spotlight-V100) still exist on the volume. It's just that Spotlight does not reintegrate the index into its master index.
I can fix the problem by either going to System Preferences, and adding the volume to the Privacy list, then removing it; or by using the CLI command sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/Name followed by sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/Name (which does the same thing).
Is this a known bug? Is there a workaround?

Dave Rahardja wrote:
I have a removable drive that I want to index with Spotlight. As long as the drive is connected, Spotlight indexes the drive correctly.
If I unmounted the drive, disconnected it, and reconnected it, Spotlight will not "see" the index in that volume any more--none of the hits in that volume will be returned by the Spotlight search.
AFAIK the hidden Spotlight folders (.DS_Store and .Spotlight-V100) still exist on the volume. It's just that Spotlight does not reintegrate the index into its master index.
I can fix the problem by either going to System Preferences, and adding the volume to the Privacy list, then removing it; or by using the CLI command sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/Name followed by sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/Name (which does the same thing).
Is this a known bug? Is there a workaround?
That could be a bug. You might file a bug report with Apple about it. If others have same issue they will let you know.
File here:
https://bugreport.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/RadarWeb.woa/wa/signIn
If you reconnect the external drive and then reboot, does Spotlight pick it back up?
If so, what happens if you simply reconnect the drive and logoff and back on?
Spotlight is supposed to automatically access any attached drive not in the exclude list.

A possible cause for the Lion freezes: Spotlight indexing

Does your Mac freeze mysteriously after upgrading to Lion?
Mine had that problem, but after troubleshooting, I seem to have identified the culprit (at least for my MacBook) and, after deleting the offending file, I have since experienced no problem. Here, I will share a case report with the hope that it will help others troubleshoot their computers experiencing the same problem.
The Problem: Mac (running Lion 10.7 or 10.7.1) freezes sometime after logging on. The freeze begins by an inability to get a response to clicks. The cursor is still active, but after a click or two the cursor turns into a spinning disc. After some time, the clock stops updating on the menu bar.
Mine froze consistently after about 15-20 min after logging on. It happened regardless of which application I was using, it froze even if I didn't do anything after logging on. It required a reboot (control-command-power button on a MacBook) everytime.
Was Spotlight indexing active right before the freeze happened? When Spotlight indexing is active, the magnifying glass icon on the upper right corner of your display will show a blinking dot. Mine was.
A Possible Culprit: Spotlight may have encountered a corrupt file on the hard disk during indexing.
What you can do:
Before you do anything, it is recommended that you have backed up all your files. Unfortunately, it is difficult to back up now because the Mac may freeze during the back up process.
1. Check the errors related to Spotlight by opening Console, which is an utility app that you can find in the Applications>Utilities folder. Do you see error messages for "mdworkers"? It does not always show up before the freeze, but this may indicate some problems during Spotlight indexing.
2. Confirm the problem by turning off Spotlight indexing. You can do this in a number of ways, but I will list two ways below:
a) Go to System Preferences and click on Spotlight icon. Under the Privacy tab, click on "+" icon and add the "Users" folder (or any particular folder that you may suspect). The indexing will not happen to files in that folder. Also, turn off Time Machine and disconnect back up disks, if you use any. Apparently Spotlight indexes within the Time Machine backups. OR
b) For experienced users: Open Terminal and type "sudo mdutil -i off" without the quotes. (To turn it back on, type "sudo mdutil -i on /" without the quotes)
3. Try using your computer with Spotlight turned off. Does it still freeze? If it does not, you have confirmed that the problem is with Spotlight indexing.
4. Find the offending file that causes problem by turning Spotlight indexing back on...
a) Remove the folder by highlighting and clicking on "-" button under the Privacy tab. OR
b) For experienced users: Type "sudo mdutil -i on /" without the quotes.
5. ...and then repeating steps 2a, 3, and 4a. Try isolating different folders until you can narrow down the problem. This process may take a while.
6. Once you narrowed down to a few folders, try QuickLook through the contents of the folder while the Console is open. To use QuickLook, highlight a file in the Finder and hit a space bar on your keyboard. It is helpful to set the Finder in a column view so you can use arrow keys to navigate through the folders. Does Console show you an error when you QuickLook a file? Can you double click and open that file? If not, the file may be corrupt. Trash that file and empty trash.
7. Now turn Spotlight indexing back on (step 4) and use your computer for a while. Does it still freeze? If so, repeat the process and find other corrupt files.
For me, it was a single corrupt image file in the Documents folder that caused the freezing problem. I deleted it and the problem went away. Since that file had been untouched for years, and I did not experience the same freezing problem in Snow Leopard, I suspect that Spotlight in Lion is somehow less permissive of corrupt files assuming that the file did not corrupt after the upgrade.
Steps 4-7 is cumbersome and it takes a long time to troubleshoot. If you know of a faster way to identify corrupt files, please share in this thread. Also, I think Spotlight should alert the users when it encounters a corrupt file and give us a choice to delete it on the spot. Please join me by sending a feedback to Apple about this.

My G5, PPC, came with Tiger installed and ran great. I decided to upgrade to Leopard (not snow leopard) and at first it seemed to work well.
Here is where you should backup, reinitialize, and make sure you use retail 10.4 rather than any OEM DVD?
After several days I noticed I have Permission errors that Disk Utility would not fix. (The only way to repair this was to insert the install disk and run Disk Utility from there: which means you have to reimport/install all the OS updates over again)
Some real confusion. Permissions can and should be done while booted from your hard drive; never run from older version of OS X.
Not all permission messages are errors.
Bootable backups (clones).
Invest in 3rd party repair programs.
Eventually the OS was crashing and freezing so I went to a local Apple repair store to ask why. Apparently Leopard is unstable on some G5 towers.
No, not really.
But you do have to insure your hardware, your software, is also current.
I decided to reinstall Tiger and still had problems. After about 5 attempts at reinstalling the OS I realized I was using a disk from a G4 tower that my kids use, so I found the disk that come with my G5 and the install worked perfectly.
So it appears that not all OS install disks are the same:
No secret there. NEVER use an OEM disc except your own; or, use retail full install versions is all. I guess you never came across that bit.
Sorry you had to take so much time, but sounds like came away with some misconceptions.

Tried to fix spotlight indexing and lost my entire drive and backup; can you help me find them?

Hi,
I am in a complete crisis. If anyone can help me, I'd be very grateful.
I tried to correct my Spotlight indexing by using a combination of the sudo mdutil -E / , sudo mdutil -i on / , and sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100 commands from the terminal.
I am not sure what happened, but the computer went into an interminable color-wheel and, when I shut down and rebooted after an hour or two, I found that both my main drive and my backup drive had severe problems.
DiskUtility volunteered to correct these. I ran it on my main drive and found that my entire directory appears to have been erased.
Disk Warrior cannot repair. Nor can TechTool. Both declare that the directory structure is now beyond repair (which they also say of my former backup clone).
My main drive now has barely nine files left - and a handful of empty folders:
file:///Volumes/Eric's HD/Library/Application Support/
file:///Volumes/Eric's HD/Library/Application Support/CrashReporter/
file:///Volumes/Eric's HD/Library/Keychains/System.keychain
file:///Volumes/Eric's HD/Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist
file:///Volumes/Eric's HD/Users/ericcolvin/Library/Frameworks/
file:///Volumes/Eric's HD/Users/ericcolvin/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist
file:///Volumes/Eric's HD/Users/ericcolvin/Library/Preferences/com.bittorrent.uTorrent.plist
file:///Volumes/Eric's HD/Users/ericcolvin/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
file:///Volumes/Eric's HD/Users/ericcolvin/Library/Autosave Information/
file:///Volumes/Eric's HD/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi
file:///Volumes/Eric's HD/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/
file:///Volumes/Eric's HD/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Directories/System/
file:///Volumes/Eric's HD/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Directories/System/Library/Exten sions/KextPropertyValues_OSBundleHelper_i386.plist.gz
file:///Volumes/Eric's HD/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Directories/System/Library/Exten sions/KextIdentifiers.plist.gz
file:///Volumes/Eric's HD/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Directories/System/Library/Exten sions/IOKitPersonalities_i386.ioplist.gz
file:///Volumes/Eric's HD/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.bootstamps/0E6271FF-3F33-3661-9B4A-38AFF32D4 860/
file:///Volumes/Eric's HD/Applications/
file:///Volumes/Eric's HD/net/
file:///Volumes/Eric's HD/home/
Though I did not run any file repairs on the back up drive, it has also lost all of its files (it shows just one remaining
file:///Volumes/Eric's Backup/System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi - whatever that is).
FileSalvage is now beavering away, attempting to scavenge some 350Gb of applications, e-mails, photos, iTunes, and movies (most of which it is unable to name). But these will all be unlabelled and randomly organised by extension type. These could take months to sift through and the list is almost certain to be incomplete. I have no other backups of my system apart from a two year old clone.
Please tell me. Is there anything I can do to get back my lost directory structure?
                       Might there be some use of an Undelete routine that might recover the directory alone and thus allow me to salvage either disk?
                        I don't even know what sort of extension to hunt for in order to attempt such a restore
                       - nor how I might drop it back into its correct spot on the volume.
All suggestions gratefully received.

Thanks, guys.
Yes, FileSalvage seems able to retrieve a vast jumble of unnamed "junk files," a tiny percentage of which are probably highly valuable to me. The problem will be finding them amongst the jumble. It could take weeks. ITunes files and MP3s are more promising, as it seems to have been able to reconstruct the files' names - and even cover art - from their metadata.
No. TechTool Pro wrote nothing at all. Sadly, though, I had allowed Disk Utility to reduce the number of threads or leaves or something in the volume directory, before I realised the gravity of the situation. It has thus made a very small alteration to my main drive (resulting, no doubt in the creation of those 9 system files and their containing folders). But the back-up drive had nothing further written to it since the apparent deletion of the volume.
I downloaded a freeware program called TestDisk which claims to analyse drive partitions. The partitions on each of my two physical drives (the internal and the backup clone) were not apparently affected - just the total loss of the volume directory structure on the boot partition in each case. So, would this be the wrong tool for the job? http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk It does claim to be able to "Rebuild NTFS boot sector." I don't really know what that means. Can anyone tell me whether a rebuilt boot sector will enable me to recover a deleted volume directory structure?
Meanwhile, I am also running a trial version of Stellar Phoenix, which claims to reinstate "lost/deleted volumes." It claims to have "found 6 lost/deleted volumes" already - after five hours, during which it has scanned about 5% of my 1.5 T external drive. So I suppose it may well take days to finish scanning. Then, I expect it may ask me to buy a serial code in order to proceed.
Does anyone have experience with Phoenix, or understand the jargon about lost/deleted volumes? Once I've bought the full version, is there a good chance it will actually reconstruct the whole volume as it once was - or is it more likely just to scavenge scores of thousands of nameless file snippets as per FileSalvage?
I don't have a problem with paying the boffins at Stellar if they are actually able to save me months of sifting through random unnamed files in order to locate the ones I've lost.

Spotlight indexing of Time Capsule - feature or bug?

I understand why backups are indexed: the ability to use Spotlight from within Time Machine is a fantastic feature. But the method by which this index is created does not make sense where a Time Capsule is in use (or indeed most networked storage, but since many configurations are officially unsupported let's just keep this discussion focused on the officially approved one!).
Typically (from my sample size of 1), a complete system backup is of the order of 100GB; however, after the initial backup is complete, Time Machine only needs to copy modified files to the backup drive, which can lead to very small and fast subsequent backups: unchanged files are created in-situ with a hardlink to the existing copy on the backup drive.
A problem arises when, after a backup completes, Spotlight attempts to index the changes to the backup drive: it appears that it inspects every unindexed file (involves transfer to the local machine) including such unmodified/hardlinked files. This therefore gives rise to a situation where a backup that writes only a few kilobytes to the backup drive results in Spotlight reading hundreds of gigabytes from that drive.
Even with a throughput of 100Mbps, this would take close to an hour and a half (in reality, especially over wireless networks, it takes many hours); meanwhile Time Machine reaches its next scheduled backup and cannot proceed until Spotlight has finished indexing.
Altogether, this appears to render Time Capsules useless for system backup (unless one is connected via gigabit ethernet, which is neither a requisite nor a desirable constraint). One does not need to look far to see how many users this issue is affecting.
In previous versions of OS X, one could workaround this issue by disabling Spotlight indexing of the backup volume; however, since Lion (or Snow Leopard?), this is no longer possible.
To my mind, the design is flawed - some might call it a "bug": there should be a more efficient method of indexing drives, especially networked ones (ideally avoiding the redundancy of reindexing hardlinked files). At worst, Time Machine could provide to Spotlight all the metadata it requires for the entire backup: thus avoiding the need for Spotlight to read such files from the backup volume.
...or have I misunderstood something?

nickety wrote:
I understand why backups are indexed: the ability to use Spotlight from within Time Machine is a fantastic feature.
That's not the reason; Time Machine requires the indexing in order to work, especially for the "Star Wars" display.
Altogether, this appears to render Time Capsules useless for system backup
That's not normal; you have something else wrong, possibly a corrupt index. See the pink box in #D2 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
In previous versions of OS X, one could workaround this issue by disabling Spotlight indexing of the backup volume
Not really. The backups were still indexed; you just didn't get a message. See the note in item 2 here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/8991.html

Spotlight Indexing Problem

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