mds stores crashed - how to restart process without restarting mac

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JTFCD Author

Level 1

136 points

mds stores crashed - how to restart process without restarting mac

About once a month or so, the mds stores process crashes on a Mac I'm using as a server.

Once this happens, the mds stores process in activity monitor on the Mac server continues to run, but it's not working.

When client Macs try to search this server, nothing is found.

A restart of this Mac server solves this problem, but restarting this server is a pain.

Is there anyway to get the mds stores process working again without a restart?

Part of crash log is below:

Process: mds_stores [31092]

Path: /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/Metadata.framework/Versions/A/Support/mds_stores

Identifier: mds_stores

Version: 917.36

Code Type: X86-64 (Native)

Parent Process: launchd [1]

Responsible: mds_stores [31092]

User ID: 0

Date/Time: 2019-04-30 08:35:43.767 +0100

OS Version: Mac OS X 10.10.5 (14F1808)

Report Version: 11

Anonymous UUID: E89FBEE8-6CC7-9AC4-1248-DBCBC9613F8E

Time Awake Since Boot: 2300000 seconds

Crashed Thread: 8 Dispatch queue: com.apple.metadata.spotlightindex.Set Attributes scheduler for for index at /Volumes/Big F Server Shares/.Spotlight-V100/Store-

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)

Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000bad

VM Regions Near 0xbad:

-->

__TEXT 000000010009c000-00000001000e2000 [ 280K] r-x/rwx SM=COW /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/Metadata.framework/Versions/A/Support/mds_stores

Application Specific Information:

[0x101a8d000]/SourceCache/Spotlight_frameworks/Spotlight-917.36/core-db/serial-db2/sdb2.c:1257: failed assertion 'dbme->pgnum == pgnum' /private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/T (hfs, t: 0x11, st: 0x1, f: 0x4809018)

[0x101a8d000](Error) IndexSDB in int map_update(datastore_info *, db_pgnum_t, db_oid_t, db_oid_t, db_uint32_t, db_uint32_t):/Volumes/Big F Server Shares/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2/408C0CDB-417F-4ADE-B131-3E3D07B93D5C/store.db : ERR: map_update: page offset doesn't match! 0xb91 !

iMac 27", macOS 10.13

Posted on Apr 30, 2019 1:45 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

JTFCD Author

Level 1

136 points

May 1, 2019 2:09 AM in response to JTFCD

Follow up for this in case anyone else comes up against this problem.

In the end what I did to get it working was to simply perform a search locally on the actual server itself.

This worked fine, showing that Spotlight was working.

This seems to wake up spotlight search on this server from the clients Mac's and all is OK.

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Answer 2

JTFCD Author

Level 1

136 points

Apr 30, 2019 8:26 AM in response to JTFCD

So I found this online where you unload and reload this plist.

Any takers on whether this is OK to do?

Copy this into Termainal to stop Spotlight:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

Next, run this to restart Spotlight:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

It will force Spotlight to stop indexing and when it restarts, it should go back to normal.

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Answer 3

JTFCD Author

Level 1

136 points

May 3, 2019 7:34 AM in response to BDAqua

So I've had the problem again, crashed this morning.

I've tried the above solution but it doesn't work this time, leading me to believe this is something else.

When i go to the Mac Server and try a search using spotlight from the menu bar, it doesn't find anything but it says it's indexing.

It got about 20% and then stopped.

Doing a standard search command F finds it OK on the Server, but the clients still can't find anything.

Any help much appreciated, I don't want to just restart the Mac Server or rebuild the spotlight database I need to find out why it's happening and if I can get Spotlight working again without a restart.

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Answer 4

BDAqua

Level 10

245,489 points

May 3, 2019 10:50 AM in response to JTFCD

As a test, does these Apps always work for finding things on the Clients?

Find Any File...

http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/index.php

Hold Option or alt key when selecting Find to Find All.

EasyFind...

http://www.devon-technologies.com/download/

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Answer 5

JTFCD Author

Level 1

136 points

May 5, 2019 10:01 AM in response to BDAqua

thanks for the reply, I’ve always used find any file as a backup for when spotlight stops working on the server.

when the clients can’t find things on the server using spotlight, they use find any file searching the server, and it always finds the files ok, albeit very slowly

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