[rotuts]

Ive now moved to 10.5.6

I now have in my activity monitor something called

mdworker

I have no idea what it is

but I cant get rid of it

It may be from 10.5.6 or not

Please help be fore I go

[olePigeon]

That's Spotlight, it's indexing your files. It does that when you first install the OS. After a while it'll stop and everything will go back to normal.

[Cold Warrior]

http://forums.macnn.com/90/mac-os-x/...10-5-mdworker/

http://forums.macnn.com/90/mac-os-x/...at-do-they-do/

[cgc]

Maybe we should first explain what Google is and how it can be your friend...

[Big Mac]

It's something Forums users had a crusade against.

[cgc]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

It's something Forums users had a crusade against.

You talking about Google or mdworker?

[rotuts]

Much thankfullness for your help

Google? for a Mac?

well Id rather not do the index Id rather not use Spotlight this way.

so Can I turn it off?

Google you say?

thanks

Id sure like to go back to OS 7



maybe not

[AKcrab]

You want spotlight.

Once the initial index is done you'll never notice it again.

[rotuts]

I take your word for it. in 10.4.x my system was constantnly " indexed" and slowed everything down unless I put the 4 drives in 'privacy' in spotllight

Ill keep an eye on it and thanks for the info.

[mattyb]

Originally Posted by AKcrab 

You want spotlight.

Once the initial index is done you'll never notice it again.

I don't share AKcrab's view.

This is working from memory, so you'd better check before doing what I do :

To ensure user + mdworker harmony, go into Sys Prefs and tell Spotlight not to index certain folders / hard drives / etc. I have put every high level folder to NOT be indexed. In terminal you need to then restart ATTServer and Spotlight, the commands that I used :

sudo killall ATTServer

and

sudo killall Spotlight.

CPU usage then goes right down and peace reigns on your machine.

Like I said, this is what I do/did and I never use Spotlight. I recommend the Quicksilver side of the Force.

[cgc]

I agree that mdworker is a CPU hog...even after the initial index, I catch it running. When it runs it noticably slows down my MacPro (seems that most intensive HDD activity does). Apple needs to rework this but Spotlight is handy...I think I'll put everything on the "do not scan" list except my documents folder...

[cwkmacuser]

I don't remember my old PowerBook ever doing that when I installed Tiger or Leopard. Something new?

[Simon]

AKcrab is right. You want Spotlight working. You want mdworker to do its job.

Let mdworker do its thing once after you install OS X. Go out, take a break. Then when you come back it will be done and you won't be bothered anymore. But interrupting it during its initial run is asking for all kinds of issues later on.

[cwkmacuser]

^Was this referring to my post, Simon?

[Simon]

Umm, no. It referred to the question raised by the OP.

The answer to your question is: no, it's not anything new. Spotlight has been with us since Tiger. The fact that after installing OS X mdworker first needs to index the entire drive hasn't change since either. Obviously you just didn't notice it. Next time you install OS X watch the Spotlight icon once you've rebooted. When there's that blinking dot in the magnifying glass, that's when mdworker is doing its initial indexing.

[Big Mac]

Yeah, Spotlight provides important functionality beyond searching for files. Time Machine uses it for backups. It needs to index your drive(s) initially and then you most likely won't notice it afterward. Don't over-think things unless you see mdworker continuously processing over a number of days, which would be abnormal.

[mattyb]

Caveat : I don't use Time machine, and I have lots and lots of pdfs on my machine - which apparently causes Spotlight to balistic.

Listen to Big Mac and Simon before me, they have much more experience with Macs than I do.

[Big Mac]

That's very kind of you to say, mattyb.

You can always put your PDF folders in the privacy tab if they cause problems with indexing.

[cwkmacuser]

I don't use Time Machine either.

[AKcrab]

Originally Posted by mattyb 

Caveat : I don't use Time machine, and I have lots and lots of pdfs on my machine - which apparently causes Spotlight to balistic.

I just did a spotlight search for

Code:
kind:pdf

and got 2765. A lot of these are 100+ page service manuals. I don't have any problems with spotlight.

Are you talking like 5-10K+ pdfs?

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by cwkmacuser 

I don't use Time Machine either.

What do you use to maintain your backups?

[mattyb]

My understanding of Spotlight and pdfs was that it created an index of the text in the actual pdfs, so that you could search within the pdfs with Spotlight. This is what (when having a directory with loads of pdfs) makes Spotlight so active. Well that was my experience. I presume that the size of the pdfs has a profound impact on how hard Spotlight will work, not necessarily the number of pdfs.

I have a few external disks and I use them for cloning my system. Each time I connect the external, Spotlight starts indexing. I have to add the external disk every time into Spotlights prefs to ignore. I then do the killall commands that I listed previously.

I use clones as backups. Two separate external hard drives.

[Spheric Harlot]

Spotlight does not start indexing external drives that have been properly unmounted on my system - it briefly verifies last modified dates, and that's it.

[osiris]

Originally Posted by olePigeon 

That's Spotlight, it's indexing your files. It does that when you first install the OS. After a while it'll stop and everything will go back to normal.

This got me thinking - Apple should give the user a prompt asking for permission to spotlight. Something like "Now, Later, Never". On a brand new Mac or a new OS install, the system slows considerably until mdworker is done. Just a thought.

[Big Mac]

Good idea, but I guess Apple assumes users will just decline the option and would rather not provide the choice, even if the out of the box experience is less than optimal.