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In a "mdworker quit unexpectedly" loop after turning on Smart Sync
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 t...
Hi everyone,
I wanted to give you an update on the issue of mdworker crashing when reading a mismatch in the expected logical vs physical size of PDFs on Mac.
Firstly we've not forgotten about this, a lot of work has been going on in the background to resolve the issue. It has required extensive code re-writing. For those not familiar with the issue, users may see within the logs mdworker crashing. This crash is fairly silent, though will appear in logs. There's no risk to data, but for those who like to inspect clean logs this can cause a lot of noise and may be viewed as sub-optimal.
Based on the feedback raised by yourselves on this forum we've spent considerable time working toward a fix. We've changed the way we write Smart Sync placeholders (ie the files that look like files, but take up 0kb until recalled) for those on 10.13.5 and later. The new sparse format will not trigger an mdworker crash.
We've tested within the beta to validate the code and at this point have now rolled the fix / changed behavior out to 100%.
This is a forward fix, so from now on all and any placeholders created will not suffer this issue. For those who have the placeholders (the empty files with the grey cloud symbol on them) already on their machines there are a few options:
- Unlink and relink your Dropbox. Note: this will trigger a reindex of content that may take minutes to a few hours depending on your filecount.
- Remove the content, via Selective Sync, then return it. Similarly, but perhaps preferably, this will remove the placeholders then re-add them quickly and non-destructively.
There are a few other options, but those keen to avoid this error being highlighted in logs can take these steps.
Many thanks for your feedback on this issue here, it's driven a clear change in product. We pay close attention to the feedback surfaced via this channel so if you have other wishes please either add to existing threads, up-vote ideas, or create your own thread to spark discussion or development.
Ross_S
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffThanks for letting me know, we've reached out to you by email and will investigate it and resolve the issue via that support ticket.
Many thanks for reporting this issue to us.
Many thanks for reporting this issue to us.
Was this issue resolved? I'm having the same problem.
- Ross_S
zobie wrote:
Was this issue resolved? I'm having the same problem.
Hi there,
I'm still looking into it, I'll email you too so we can start a support ticket incase it's an unrelated cause.
Thanks for highlighting.
I am having the same issue. I tried the code to disable and it has stoped for now. I have not yet enabled it again.
I enabled it and the error came back. So I have to keep spotlight disable for the error to go away or close dropbox for it to dissaper.
I have tried to unsync my dropbox and sync again same error.
Hi Ross,
Do you have any update on this? I never saw an email from come through. But I'm still having this problem.
Thanks for your help.
I have this problem too, it's very annoying. I temporarily "solved" it by excluding my Dropbox-folder from Spotlight indexing. It's not an ideal solution, but it's neater than disabling spotlight altogether, because this way you can still use the search function.
hiding the dropbox cache folder from spotlight as posted earlier wasn't the solution... mdworker came back :-(
What worked temporarely for me was deleting the hidden .Spotlight-V100 folder on the root of my systemdisk (where dropbox stores its files as well). After a restart it took some time to rebuild the entire spotlight index, but mdworker didn't show up again and smart sync and searching in the dropbox worked like a charm... for about one day, then the nightmare was back.
So far: none of the many "solutions" posted here and on other forums worked. Since many many months now. Please, Dropbox, stop ignoring your customers, please?!?
zobie: no.
