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Forum Discussion
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.
Did you ever resolve this'll? I have a user with this problem and it's related to SmartSync. Erased the computer and reinstalled and started immediately again. Just now trying to diagnose further and will report back.
Maybe someone from Dropbox can reach out to me? I'm a Dropbox Partner and I'm nervous to deploy this feature to other clients now.
I solved this issue a while back now.
IIRC all you need to do is to disable OSX Spotlight indexing for the Dropbox folder(s). You can do this from Settings --> Spotlight --> Privacy (tab) and add the Dropbox sync folder(s).
It was some time now so I might have forgotten some details so let me know if it works for you and I'll try to dig a little deeper to see if there was something else I needed to do.
It is indeed a very annoying issue...
EDIT: I now saw that a similar answer was given before. To my knowledge there is no way around disabling Spotlight for the affected folders. However you only need to disable folders actually used with Smart Sync.
- I appreciate your input, but that's not exactly a fix. It certainly prevents the mdworker crashes from happening, but a fix would involve keeping on Spotlight.
I still need to some more research, but this is a strange issue. I have other users at this same location who use SmartSync on a Mac with Spotlight turned on who don't have any issues. I'm hoping that switching from SmartSync Online back to Local can fix the issue until further information from Dropbox comes about.
I'll keep everyone updated if I discover anything new.I have the same issues and just leave it on the side. Before someone suggested turning of spotlight and I did it, but after I get skype and all types of new errors. I turned it back on as nothing is working and the computer is full of errors from time to time.
For now I turned off Online-Only SmartSync, and used Selective Sync to only keep local copies of relevant data, and that is working for now. I have opened a ticket wth Dropbox to see what they say, but it is definitely a problem related to SmartSync.
