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In a "mdworker quit unexpectedly" loop after turning on Smart Sync
Ever since turning on Dropbox Smart Sync, Spotlight has been going nuts and using tons of CPU. The helper app "mdworker" is constantly crashing. Will report back after Dropbox finishes indexing all the Smart Sync files.
PS. Funny you can't link Dropbox photos to the image uploader in this forum.
Hi everyone,
I wanted to give you an update on the issue of mdworker crashing when reading a mismatch in the expected logical vs physical size of PDFs on Mac.
Firstly we've not forgotten about this, a lot of work has been going on in the background to resolve the issue. It has required extensive code re-writing. For those not familiar with the issue, users may see within the logs mdworker crashing. This crash is fairly silent, though will appear in logs. There's no risk to data, but for those who like to inspect clean logs this can cause a lot of noise and may be viewed as sub-optimal.
Based on the feedback raised by yourselves on this forum we've spent considerable time working toward a fix. We've changed the way we write Smart Sync placeholders (ie the files that look like files, but take up 0kb until recalled) for those on 10.13.5 and later. The new sparse format will not trigger an mdworker crash.
We've tested within the beta to validate the code and at this point have now rolled the fix / changed behavior out to 100%.
This is a forward fix, so from now on all and any placeholders created will not suffer this issue. For those who have the placeholders (the empty files with the grey cloud symbol on them) already on their machines there are a few options:
- Unlink and relink your Dropbox. Note: this will trigger a reindex of content that may take minutes to a few hours depending on your filecount.
- Remove the content, via Selective Sync, then return it. Similarly, but perhaps preferably, this will remove the placeholders then re-add them quickly and non-destructively.
There are a few other options, but those keen to avoid this error being highlighted in logs can take these steps.
Many thanks for your feedback on this issue here, it's driven a clear change in product. We pay close attention to the feedback surfaced via this channel so if you have other wishes please either add to existing threads, up-vote ideas, or create your own thread to spark discussion or development.
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I'm having the same issue since turning on smartsync..
Is there really no solution to this yet?
Has this been resolved? mdworker is throwing an error on PDF.mdimporter for me as well.
It seems as though mdworker is having a problem with files that aren't really there.
http://justinh.org/2012/01/20/a-fix-for-os-x-if-your-mds-or-mdworker-processes-are-running-wild/
SO the solution I found was to format the Mac. I deleted the Hard drive and reisntalled the OS. It no longer affects the Mac now.
The process was restart the mac press Command key + R and enter recovry mode, disk utility, delete the hard drive by clicking erase and after exit and resintall OS. This solved it for me.
- that seems a bit extreme - I'm not reformatting my Mac - this is a Dropbox issue - they really need to sort it out
I agree with you but after 10 months of no reply and many extras errors starting to appear it was the best solution I found.
I can tell you that this issue happens consistently on multiple brand new machines that I have deployed, so I doubt very much that reformatting is a true solution for most people.
I've found that on many machines the crash report popup is just supressed, but you can still see them piling up if you go to the Console app and check the User Reports folder.
How can I revert back to my pre-smart-sync configuration? It looks like I'd have to configure exclusions by hand all over again. Having Spotlight search my (synced) files is a huge reason I use dropbobx.
I am having the same problem here, (thanks to this forum I managed to identify that the issue was coming from Dropbox SmartSync) Have you sorted it yet??? It is quite unbearable. The only 'quick fix' I found is to leave the error message in the corner of my screen and at least it doesn't keep on popping up every 10 seconds... Surely we can agree this is not a solution. Please advise, I do not want to disable mdworker or Spotlight.
Hi MarieRCH,
I found a slightly better solution than hiding the dialogue box in the corner (see above post)
This command entered in terminal stopped the pop-up dialogue box
defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType none
The problem still exists and it doesn't stop the indexing - just stops the annoying dialogue boxes.
Still waiting on a fix...
