cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Announcements
Want to learn some quick and useful tips to make your day easier? Check out how Calvin uses Replay to get feedback from other teams at Dropbox here.

Integrations

Find solutions to issues with third-party integrations from the Dropbox Community. Share advice and help members with their integration questions.

cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Re: In a "mdworker quit unexpectedly" loop after turning on Smart Sync

In a "mdworker quit unexpectedly" loop after turning on Smart Sync

Kidhack
Helpful | Level 5
Go to solution

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. 

Quit unexpectedly

PS. Funny you can't link Dropbox photos to the image uploader in this forum.

 
102 Replies 102

Jane
Dropbox Staff
Go to solution

Hey Jtaylor2d

 

Your feedback is appreciated, it's been a pleasure working on that with you! 

 

If you need help with anything else in the future, please let us know here! 🙂

 

Kind regards, 

JaneA

 


Jane
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support

 

Heart Did this post help you? If so please give it a Like below. 
:white_check_mark: Did this post fix your issue/answer your question? If so please press the 'Accept as Best Answer' button to help others find it.
:arrows_counterclockwise: Still stuck? Ask me a question! (
Questions asked in the community will likely receive an answer within 4 hours!)

Jtaylor2d
Helpful | Level 5
Go to solution

Your message seems to imply we are finished, which I hope is not the case. I was just giving you some additional information, and I look forward to working with you on THIS issue in the present and the future until resolved.

Jane
Dropbox Staff
Go to solution

Hey Jtaylor2d

 

Oh, definitely, this is what I meant indeed. Apologies if it came across otherwise. In fact, my implication was that this thread will be left open as a point of contact! You can get back in touch here at any time, both for feedback or additional information. 

 

Again, your ongoing coopeartion is truly appreciated. 

 

Kind regards, 

JaneA

 


Jane
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support

 

Heart Did this post help you? If so please give it a Like below. 
:white_check_mark: Did this post fix your issue/answer your question? If so please press the 'Accept as Best Answer' button to help others find it.
:arrows_counterclockwise: Still stuck? Ask me a question! (
Questions asked in the community will likely receive an answer within 4 hours!)

BCIT
Explorer | Level 4
Go to solution

Just to add another data point here, our company has also been having this issue since Smart Sync was launched.

 

It appears that the issue is related to the PDF Spotlight importer being unable to read the metadata from the Smart Synced files. Whatever the file structure of those files is seems to be throwing the importer for a loop. 

 

From my crash report:

 

Thread 4 Crashed:
10 com.apple.MDImporter.PDF 0x000000010b326f94 GetMetadataForFile + 97

Euklid
Helpful | Level 5
Go to solution

Can confirm, I was observing this on my machine with Smart Sync turned on.

 

In Activity Monitor under CPU sorted by % CPU I noticed ReportCrash appearing every few minutes on top.

 

In Console under User Reports multiple mdworker crashes are listed:

 

Crashed Thread:        4

Exception Type:        EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS)
Exception Codes:       0x000000000000000a, 0x000000010be48000
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Termination Signal:    Bus error: 10
Termination Reason:    Namespace SIGNAL, Code 0xa
Terminating Process:   exc handler [0]

VM Regions Near 0x10be48000:
    mapped file            000000010ba93000-000000010be48000 [ 3796K] rw-/rwx SM=COW  
--> mapped file            000000010be48000-000000010be90000 [  288K] r--/rwx SM=COW  
    __TEXT                 000000011811e000-000000011815c000 [  248K] r-x/rwx SM=COW  /usr/lib/dyld

Application Specific Information:
import fstype:hfs fsflag:480D000 flags:240000007E diag:0 isXCode:0 uti:com.adobe.pdf plugin:/Library/Spotlight/PDF.mdimporter - find suspect file using: sudo mdutil -t 130027556

Application Specific Signatures:
import uti:com.adobe.pdf plugin:/Library/Spotlight/PDF.mdimporter uuid:7D48EF77-69AB-47DB-BBD9-D907F89C3C17 61

If I run the command noted above (sudo mdutil -t 130027556) it gives me a PDF file in Dropbox which is Online Only.

Euklid
Helpful | Level 5
Go to solution

Excluding my Dropbox folders from Spotlight in the System Preferences, Spotlight under Privacy temporarely solved the issue for me.

maebs
New member | Level 2
Go to solution
I too can confirm that this mdworker frenzy also driving me nuts.
Excluding the folder like Euklid did gives me indeed a temporary solution.

My setup: MBP2016TB running Sierra, Dropbox 28.4.14 synced with both personal and business (I think the business account is the culprit because a lot of people also live-editing MS Word documents for example)

CarlJ
New member | Level 2
Go to solution

Is there an update on this issue? I've quickly run through the thread and it seems there's a lot of people having this issue. 

 

In my case, the pdf worker seems to crash on every pdf document that's come accross the mdworker...

 

Any progress on this issue?

 

Carl

PeterW
Explorer | Level 3
Go to solution

Yup. Same here. Crashes on PDF.mdimporter and Font.mdimporter. Happens with Smart Synced files that are "online only". QuickLook crashes as well, as it uses the same Spotlight. mdworker mechanisms. Dropbox should work together with Apple to resolve this. Good Luck.

Exclusing the dropbox folders form within the Spotlight control panel is one workaround. Removing the Spotlight Importer packages for font en PDF files in the /System/Library/Spotlight folder is another one.

If the Spotlight Importers would exit somewhat more gracefully instead of crashing mdimporter, the issue would be resolved.

Of course more mdimporters could crash on the "smart synced" files, but these are the ones I noticed.

KennethL
New member | Level 2
Go to solution

JaneA - the last "dropbox" response on this issue was in may, is there any news? Are you guys working on a solution? We are struggeling here, loosing time every day not beeing able to spotlight search dropbox!

 

Please give us a fix soon.

Need more support?