I've reset the Spotlight index today and things seem better today.
Still more apparent use of fans than I would like.
Regards,
Steve
On 13 Sep 2009, at 17:50, Peter Eckel <pe-google...@hindenburgring.com
>Hi,
>
>since I upgraded to Mac OS X 10.6, I am noticing very high load
>(30-60%) on the mds and mdworker processes. It is mainly noticable on
>my MacBooks (Air/Pro) because of the fan running continually and the
>'Books getting unusually hot.
...
>
>So the question is, is this a general problem with Mailsmith's
>mdimporter's code, does it have to do something with my database, or
>does someone have a better idea? I can live without Spotlight indexing
>my mails for the time being, but if anyone should have a similar
>problem it could be of general interest.
>
>Regards,
>
>Peter.
I was seeing a loss of battery life on my new Mac Book Pro after
upgrading to 10.6. Reports of high CPU use and low battery life
on other forums led me to look at mds and mdsworker. I disabled
them and thing are back to normal battery wise. The problem
seems pretty widespread, so it may be more than a Mailsmith
problem, more likely a spotlight bug that may interact badly
with a lot of different apps.
For now, Im living without spotlight.
Doug
>- I deleted the File Mailsmith.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/
>MailsmithImporter.mdimporter, and after a restart of the mds process
>the CPU load is down, the 'Books run cool and everything is fine
>again.
I came back home a couple of days ago to find the fans thrashing
away and the base of the MBP toasty warm. So after previously
resetting the Spotlight indexing, I decided to repeat your
experiment and things seemed to have calmed down here too.
Cheers,
Steve Hodgson
>>- I deleted the File Mailsmith.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/
>>MailsmithImporter.mdimporter, and after a restart of the mds process
>>the CPU load is down, the 'Books run cool and everything is fine
>>again.
>
>I came back home a couple of days ago to find the fans
>thrashing away and the base of the MBP toasty warm. So after
>previously resetting the Spotlight indexing, I decided to
>repeat your experiment and things seemed to have calmed down
>here too.
I've had this symptom also but I don't think that Mailsmith has
been involved ... I think, I better check.
--
Jan Erik Moström, http://mostrom.eu
I had the same thing: very high loads on mdworker (40-60% CPU
usage almost continuously). I deleted mdimporter a couple of
days ago and all is fine since then.
Ann
>I've had this symptom also but I don't think that Mailsmith has been
>involved ... I think, I better check.
I was wrong, it does seem to be Mailsmith related. Here is what
Activity Monitor reports before doing any changes at all: <http://emberapp.com/jemostrom/images/efter-omstart/sizes/m.png>
(the activity is caused by the mds and mdsworker32 processes)
If I remove the Mailsmith mdi importer plugin and restart then
it looks like this
<http://emberapp.com/jemostrom/images/efter-ta-bort-och-omstart/sizes/m.png>
So my guess is that the plugin has something to do with my
Spotlight problems
jem
<2.33GHZ MBPC2D running Mac OS X 10.6.1 and Mailsmith 2.2.2 (301)>
Blessings,
> Just for the record: Upgraded to 2.2.2 (304) today, fans are on,
> excessive heat is back, mds/mdworker at high load.
We don't have any control over the process. For every message that
isn't in the Spotlight index, the OS loads our plugin, and says "Here,
index this file".
How much mail do you have?
What is the mds process doing when the load is high?
> About 60k, but low traffic (about 200-300 mails on a busy day, most of
> it mailing lists). But mds load wasn't an issue at all with 10.5, it
> started to misbehave excatly when I upgraded to 10.6.
I can't refrain from pointing out the obvious: If the symptom started
when you updated the OS, then maybe the OS is to blame?
>> What is the mds process doing when the load is high?
>
> How can I debug that?
I'd start by opening Console.app, and filtering the All Messages node
down to items containing "mdw". See if any errors or other diagnostics
are being logged.
Then, find the pid of the process that's working too hard, and:
sample <pid> 10 10
to see what code is running, and then
sudo fs_usage -w <pid>
to see what file(s) the process is looking at.
There are some forms of malformed message which cause the importer to
crash. Under 10.4 and 10.5, the message/file would be marked as a
crasher, and Spotlight would exclude it from the list of files to
index. It sounds like maybe that isn't happening under 10.6?
Steve
>We don't have any control over the process. For every message
>that isn't in the Spotlight index, the OS loads our plugin,
>and says "Here, index this file".
>
>How much mail do you have?
>
>What is the mds process doing when the load is high?
I think there is something else that is happening here. If I
re-index the whole disk Spotlight uses very little resources
until it's done - then it starts using a lot of CPU. The only
way I know to stop this is either to disable spotlight or remove
the Mailsmith Spotlight plugin.
>
>I think there is something else that is happening here. If I re-index
>the whole disk Spotlight uses very little resources until it's done -
>then it starts using a lot of CPU. The only way I know to stop this is
>either to disable spotlight or remove the Mailsmith Spotlight plugin.
I seem to have a dance going on here having gone to 10.6.1. mds
and mdworker show something like the following CPU in Activity
Monitor on my dual core 2.4 gig aluminium
unibody-without-fire-I-should-have-waited, at roughly 5 second intervals:
mds 0.0 49.6 11 1.8 0.0 0.1 19.3 48.6
mdworker 0.0 39.0 16.0 2.4 0.1 0.0 17.9 38.8
in other words, leaping into action then vanishing, then
leaping. When they're both quiet, there is something like 30-60%
CPU idle so it doesn't seem to be something else snatching CPU.
Doubt that helps *specifically* but happy to send samples along
if this is worth investigating.
By disabling Spotlight, do you mean turning off the app
altogether? Or just listing "Mailsmith User Data" as a folder
not to search under its Privacy options?
Robert W. Franson
>By disabling Spotlight, do you mean turning off the app
>altogether? Or just listing "Mailsmith User Data" as a folder
>not to search under its Privacy options?
Turning off indexing for the whole disk (I've never been a man
of subtle behavior :) but removing the Mailsmith plugin works best.
>I seem to have a dance going on here having gone to 10.6.1. mds
>and mdworker show something like the following CPU in Activity
>Monitor on my dual core 2.4 gig aluminium
>unibody-without-fire-I-should-have-waited, at roughly 5 second intervals:
This is what I used to see before removing the mailsmith plugin
<http://emberapp.com/jemostrom/images/spotlight/sizes/m.png>
efter removing the plugin
<http://emberapp.com/jemostrom/images/efter-ta-bort-och-omstart/sizes/m.png>
what I did to get rid of the high load is to put the mailsmith
mail folder in your home directory to the private zone of spotlight.
Sven
> another round ... the latest invocation of the mdworker obviously
> opened 127743 message files (three times each ...). Which is much more
> than I'd expect, since I don't even have 60000 Mails in my database.
> Probably it indexed the message files more than once.
That's just weird.
[...]
> Steve, are you interested in the fs_usage output? If so, I can mail it
> to you offline.
I don't think there's a lot to be learned beyond the snippet you
posted earlier, but go ahead and mail them to me.
Steve
>How can the Mailsmith plugin be removed? Remove it from within
>the application package?
That is what I did
>ardbeg:~ pete$ grep 'open .*\.msgd ' mailsmith.fs_usage_5.txt | wc -l
>383228
You've named your computer after an Islay single-malt whisky?
Don't you find all the subliminal messages throughout the day
too tempting?
I think I'll test the theory by renaming my machine Highland-Park.
Cheers (or Slàinte),
Steve Hodgson
Same here
jem
--
Jan Erik Moström
http://mostrom.eu
>Another update (two in one day ... you guys are too fast for me :-)):
>
>The same procedure with (310), the same result, the same workaround.
After upgrading to 2.2.3 (310) I also noticed mdworker processes
consuming excessive amounts of CPU, and have disabled spotlight
for my Mailsmith User Data folder to restore sanity.
This did not happen, or I did not notice it, in any prior version.
>After upgrading to 2.2.3 (310) I also noticed mdworker processes
>consuming excessive amounts of CPU, and have disabled spotlight for
>my Mailsmith User Data folder to restore sanity.
>This did not happen, or I did not notice it, in any prior version.
FWIW, I have seen the issue of high cpu usage which *appears* to
be correlated with the Mailsmith mdimporter in previous versions
but not version 2.2.3 (with OQS 10.6.2) yet.
In the past when this has occurred I have "fixed" the problem by
dragging the mdimporter from the Mailsmith bundle and
re-booting. When I see the high cpu usage problem with an
mdworker process, this procedure consistently stops the mdworker
high cpu usage.
After "fixing" the problem, I have dragged the mdiporter back to
its original location. And this does not seem to cause the high
cpu usage to start backup. Even after re-booting with the
mdimporter back in its original position, the high cpu usage
problem does not seem to come back.
Note, the problem has returned after several days to weeks of
usage. But so far, I've been unable to find a set of conditions
that reliably causes the problem to occur on my system.
Now the cpu load is no longer permanent, but intermittent. I see a
five second interval of high load, followed by five seconds of quiet
CPU, and then high load again. Using fs_usage, I could confirm that it
is indeed the mdworker process running in those high load intervals on
Mailsmith messages (always the same ones, which is the same behaviour
as in the last versions). The CPU Graph looks like this: <http://
www.hindenburgring.com/CPU.pdf>
The machine does not run so hot anymore now, but the problem of the
mdimporter re-indexing the same mails over and over again is not gone,
I just hid under the bed.
Cheers,
Peter.
I too have mds working intermittently, running about 25% of CPU load.
This is frustrating, because I am one of those who depends upon
spotlight, and who keeps everything in his email. I have decommssioned
the MailsmithImporter.mdimporter by compressing it.
I have ben having a couple of days of noticing my MacBook Pro running
VERY hot, then remembered about this issue (very unfortunately I've
had to move over to Apple Mail) and deleted the
MailsmithImporter.mdimporter file again.
Everything seems to be working fine again. As I don't use Spotlight
much this is no great hardship for me though, I can understand it
would be frustrating otherwise.
Regards (and happy new year),
Steve Hodgson
I installed 2.2.5 (314) yesterday, and the Spotlight problem is gone!
The machine is low on CPU when not used - neither constant nor
intermittent thrashing of the mdworker anymore.
Thanks Bare...um..Stickshift! As usual, you guys did a great job!
Cheers,
Peter.
I let my MB Air sit unattended for a few days, and when I returned to
it recently, it was running hot again, mdworker indexing Mailsmith
mails and obviously failing at it - same old story. Beats me why it
took so long to fall back into the old behaviour, but it seems that
the bug is still alive and kicking.
So it's delete-the-spotlight-importer-time again.
Cheers,
Peter.
> I let my MB Air sit unattended for a few days, and when I returned to
> it recently, it was running hot again, mdworker indexing Mailsmith
> mails and obviously failing at it - same old story. Beats me why it
> took so long to fall back into the old behaviour, but it seems that
> the bug is still alive and kicking.
The messages you sent me a couple months ago no longer crash the importer, so that specific bug is fixed.
You must have another flavor of malformed message.
Steve
> The messages you sent me a couple months ago no longer crash the importer, so that specific bug is fixed.
OK, that's good to know.
> You must have another flavor of malformed message.
Obviously, the (people|mailing lists) that send mail to me are *very*
inventive ... "As soon as you design some idiot-proof software,
someone else designs a bigger idiot".
I'll investigate as soon as I can, and send you the new
idiot^H^H^H^H^Hmails, if that's that fine with you.
Cheers,
Peter.
I sent you some examples from the current 'mdworker crasher list'
offline.
Cheers,
Peter.
I'm still having the same problem: high mdworker loads. Running
2.3 (407) now.
How exactly can I find out which messages are causing the problem?
Thanks,
Ann
On 2/02/10 at 00:37, pe-google...@hindenburgring.com