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infowarrior · May 21, 2005, 08:27 PM

Am running a 1Ghz TiPB with 1GB RAM.

I was moving 2 GB of data (lots of little textfiles) from one folder to another and it took FOREVER. Yet when I disabled Spotlight, I got a 40% performance increase in data copy speed.

That got me curious, so after I was done, I re-enabled Spotlight, and rebooted. I let the system sit for a few hours (to let Spotlight reindex things) and even now, it seems that Spotlight will consume up to 68% of the CPU on a regular basis....it's the singlemost resource hog on the system.

Having seen that, I'm inclined to keep it turned off permantently. Anyone else feel the same way or have similar observations?

- - e r i k - - · May 21, 2005, 08:31 PM

Spotlight does not - by design - consume any system resources other than when saving or modifying files.

TETENAL · May 21, 2005, 08:32 PM

The mdimport process takes 0.0% CPU time for me.

Recto Bold · 03:11 AM

Spotlight is a pain for me - It just seems to keep indexing relentlessly and hogs around 40-50% CPU time. It's doing my head in. It dsoesn't work any more either - Just get the SBBOD when I try and search. Obviously it's shagged - Probably needs to be reset.

Gee4orce · May 23, 2005, 03:14 AM

Try force relaunching the Finder - it worked for me when Spotlight went AWOL.

Recto Bold · May 23, 2005, 03:46 AM

Unfortunately that doesn't work. I have had spotlight re-index my drive and it is still hitting the HD like mad. It just sits there, full on, all the time. I fear a full re-install is all that will sort it. Tiger has been the worst and most bothersome UG I have had; The little niggly things are making my work day a misery and I need to sort it. It's a shame, as I really love the new features in Tiger and the feel of it, and Spotlight has been a very worthy addition of the fanfare it was given, IMHO. This stuff happens, and I am sure someone has a solution.

The re-indexing was odd. Booted up fine, the little dot was apearing in the Spotlight toolbar icon and then it was done. I tried a search and it worked great, then all of a sudden it starts indexing again. Then stops, then starts - It's potty! For now, the only way to get on with my work is to have spotlight turned off for all of my drives. I only really need it on my main HD but I'd like ot use it as it's made life a lot easier.

If anyone else has any idea I'd appreciate the assistance.

wataru · May 23, 2005, 04:38 AM

I've had this problem too. I get mds (not necessarily mdimport) and LAServer eating tons of CPU when idle. Yes, this is long after all of my drives have been indexed. For me it seems to have something to do with having large external drives mounted (160GB split into 3 partitions; yes they were already indexed).

Recto Bold · May 23, 2005, 05:06 AM

Interesting. I have 2 x 250GB FW attached to my Mac. I have them excluded from from Indexing, since they don't really need it (1 is full of MP3's and the other is just my daily backup drive). I re-did the deletion of the index file for the 3rd time and then restarted and it seems to be behaving itself now, although I wonder for how long. To delete and force a re-index I used:

sudo mdutil -E /

If you want to do the same for an external drive then just do:

sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/(put drive name here, ignoring the brackets/parentheses)

I'm wondering what it is on my system that seems to keep corrupting the index file. Anyone know what the relationship is (if any) between volume journaling and the Index?

Millennium · May 23, 2005, 06:18 AM

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - -

Spotlight does not - by design - consume any system resources other than when saving or modifying files.

I think that copying a file counts as a save, though, since you're adding a file to the filesystem. In theory, Apple could special-case this and simply copy the indexing data from the file being copied, but I don't know if they actually do that.

SMacTech · May 23, 2005, 06:30 AM

Originally Posted by Millennium

I think that copying a file counts as a save, though, since you're adding a file to the filesystem. In theory, Apple could special-case this and simply copy the indexing data from the file being copied, but I don't know if they actually do that.

Anything that causes a modification of the file, will cause SpotLight to look at the file again and reindex. I have added my download folder to be remove from SL indexing. Additionally a database folder, which sees a lot of modifications to the files had to be removed to retain top performance.

wataru · May 23, 2005, 06:32 AM

Originally Posted by Recto Bold

Interesting. I have 2 x 250GB FW attached to my Mac. I have them excluded from from Indexing, since they don't really need it (1 is full of MP3's and the other is just my daily backup drive). I re-did the deletion of the index file for the 3rd time and then restarted and it seems to be behaving itself now, although I wonder for how long. To delete and force a re-index I used:

sudo mdutil -E /

If you want to do the same for an external drive then just do:

sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/(put drive name here, ignoring the brackets/parentheses)

I'm wondering what it is on my system that seems to keep corrupting the index file. Anyone know what the relationship is (if any) between volume journaling and the Index?

I tried erasing the index and redoing it, as well as disabling indexing entirely by doing sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/volumename but the problem still came back repeately. I still find it occurring occasionally even without the drives mounted, but it's far less frequent.

Recto Bold · May 23, 2005, 06:35 AM

Originally Posted by wataru

I tried erasing the index and redoing it, as well as disabling indexing entirely by doing sudo mdutil -i off /Volumes/volumename but the problem still came back repeately. I still find it occurring occasionally even without the drives mounted, but it's far less frequent.

Yeah - I still don't trust that it is fixed for me. It's done this before and then suddenly I get the massive HD usage starting again.

SMacTech · May 23, 2005, 06:42 AM

If you run sudo fs_usage PID where PID is the process ID, you can monitor each of the mdimport and mds threads. You can eliminate the PID and see all file system access.

This can be a great troubleshooting tool, well actually it is for me.

infowarrior · May 23, 2005, 07:06 AM

Those commands are also quite handy for shutting Spotlight down, along with changing YES to NO in SPOTLIGHT= entry in the /etc/hostconfig.

wataru · May 23, 2005, 07:10 AM

Originally Posted by SMacTech

If you run sudo fs_usage PID where PID is the process ID, you can monitor each of the mdimport and mds threads. You can eliminate the PID and see all file system access.

This can be a great troubleshooting tool, well actually it is for me.

I didn't know you could have it trail a specific PID. Thanks, that should be helpful.