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

[Kidhack]

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.

[John_Cox]

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...

[MarieRCH]

@John_Cox thanks very much for this, much appreciated. Though I worry that if I do that I will forget there is a problem that needs sorting! 'Out of sight, out of mind!' 😉 Might have to resort to this if no fix happens... Thanks very much either way 🙂

[Solved]

Quitting Dropbox solved the issue

[MarieRCH]

Quitting and relaunching Dropbox definitely helps but does not solve the issue ... I can now go on for almost a full day without getting the error message but it pops back after a while... Definitely the best option so far though! The good old 'turn it off and on again' 😉

[jsnyc7]

The problem started after I turned on Dropbox smart sync. I have MacOS X 10.12.6.

You can disable indexing PDFs in the Spotlight preferences. That's what solved it for me.

[Sylvain]

"disable indexing PDFs in the Spotlight preferences" Unfortunately doesn't work for me 😕

[Walter]

Hey @Sylvain - how are you today?

Apologies for the tardy response - are you still having this issue? 

Bear in mind that you might need to perform an advanced re-install to troubleshoot this specific error. Also note, that you can always reach out to our Support team by logging a ticket if this persists. 

I hope this helps and please keep us posted. Thank you!

[Ross_S]

Actually mdworker crashing is due to the way apple interacts with certain filetypes.

The issue is only present on HFS file systems, so, with the introduction of spares files on High Sierra - which uses APFS - this issue is resolved.

For context, firstly, while you see the errors within event log there are no issues with the functionality or operation of your Dropbox software. These errors do not indicate an issue with the saving of your data.

What you are seeing is mdworker crashing as, when it reads the logical size of PDFs, the actual size and past size differ, causing the issue. As mentioned on the forum thread you could disable it/Spotlight but we would certainly not recommend this. While the error may look noisy in the logs there is no actual issue here.

Hope this helps!

[stephenceresia]

Same issue here.  DropBox team, please get it fixed!!

[stephenceresia]

I'm using 10.13.5 on APFS and having the issue.  So any insight on how to fix it would be greatly appreciated.