Re: MacOSX-admin Digest, Vol 90, Issue 11

On Jul 31, 2011, at 4:59 PM, Jerry LeVan wrote:
> 
> Well I tried fseventer and the results made no sense to me…all of the
> entries were references to files in the .vt… directories.
> 
> In addition spot light immediately restarts after a crash so finding
> the exact point in the fseventer display that might relevant is difficult.
> 
> I did a no-parameters run of memtest and no errors were logged.
> 
> I might try cloning the internal drive to a usb drive and try to
> see if I can spotlight the external drive on a mac that is not
> having any problems…
> 
> I have been doing some house cleaning on the internal drive ( i reclaimed
> over 10GB ).

Check the mdworker or mds crashlogs for what .importer is instigating the crash. Often you'll find the .importer buried somewhere inside the application package. For example for LibreOffice, right click and click on Show Package Contents, navigate to Library?Spotlight and inside is the OOoSpotlightImporter.mdimporter.

Yank it and embargo it. I throw them in the trash, because if they are crashing mdworker, they are useless. Send the crash logs to the developer. And if you're a developer I'd send the crash log to Apple, esp if this is 10.7.x that you're running. Doesn't matter how crappy the importer file is, mdworker shouldn't be crashing, becoming poorly behaved and not embargoing the importer on its own, IMO.

Chris