After restore from TM - Spotlight indexing has my computer hung

[kagatone]

After the last Mac OS-X upgrade I did something that fouled up my Mac Mini (one of the original models). I decided to restore my system to before the upgrade using Time Machine. After TM restores and reboots for the first time, the spotlight starts indexing and renders any other activity on the Mini useless. The spotlight is the only application responding and it has been working for hours with a message that says "Estimating indexing time".

Ques.
1.) Is this normal? Or is something wrong? There's really no way for me to tell if this is actually doing anything.

2.) Is there something I can do to pause the process so that I can see if the computer restored correctly?

Thanks

* Kevin

 

[merl1n]

After the last Mac OS-X upgrade I did something that fouled up my Mac Mini (one of the original models). I decided to restore my system to before the upgrade using Time Machine. After TM restores and reboots for the first time, the spotlight starts indexing and renders any other activity on the Mini useless. The spotlight is the only application responding and it has been working for hours with a message that says "Estimating indexing time".

Ques.
1.) Is this normal? Or is something wrong? There's really no way for me to tell if this is actually doing anything.

2.) Is there something I can do to pause the process so that I can see if the computer restored correctly?

Thanks

* Kevin

1. Don't know in your case since you have one of the originals (I think it is a PPC processor and spotlight indexing can take over the entire machine as it is processor intensive).

2. You can disable the indexing in System Preferences -> Spotlight -> Privacy tab and add your disk to the list. Then close the Preferences.
Wait a few minutes and indexing should stop. You can monitor this from Activity Monitor. The indexing processes are mds and mdworker.

 

[kagatone]

1. Don't know in your case since you have one of the originals (I think it is a PPC processor and spotlight indexing can take over the entire machine as it is processor intensive).

2. You can disable the indexing in System Preferences -> Spotlight -> Privacy tab and add your disk to the list. Then close the Preferences.
Wait a few minutes and indexing should stop. You can monitor this from Activity Monitor. The indexing processes are mds and mdworker.

Thanks for the fast reply!
1.) Yes it's a PPC and I guess that's expected.
2.) I can't actually do anything else other than look at the Spotlight screen right now. So opening the System Preferences is not possible at the moment. Can I do a hard power down and reboot w/o bad ramifications?

Thanks again.

 

[merl1n]

Thanks for the fast reply!
1.) Yes it's a PPC and I guess that's expected.
2.) I can't actually do anything else other than look at the Spotlight screen right now. So opening the System Preferences is not possible at the moment. Can I do a hard power down and reboot w/o bad ramifications?

Thanks again.

2. Definitely DO NOT DO THAT! Not only will you possibly corrupt the file system, you'll corrupt the indexing that has already taken place.

Just let it run its course. It may take some hours, but eventually it will finish.

 

[merl1n]

2. Definitely DO NOT DO THAT! Not only will you possibly corrupt the file system, you'll corrupt the indexing that has already taken place.

Just let it run its course. It may take some hours, but eventually it will finish.

I forgot to mention that the Spotlight indexing is not only doing your Mini, but the external disk for your TM backups. This will take a lot of time, but don't stop it, shutdown, reboot, etc.

 

[kagatone]

2. Definitely DO NOT DO THAT! Not only will you possibly corrupt the file system, you'll corrupt the indexing that has already taken place.

Just let it run its course. It may take some hours, but eventually it will finish.

Thanks. I guess my fear is that there is nothing really happening and I'm waiting for no reason. But I will try and exercise some patience in this and hopefully things will work out.

Thanks again!

 

[kagatone]

I forgot to mention that the Spotlight indexing is not only doing your Mini, but the external disk for your TM backups. This will take a lot of time, but don't stop it, shutdown, reboot, etc.

Sorry. One more question. I know that I have to be patient but 4 hours into this and I still do not see any indexing status bar progress on spotlight and the message is still "Estimating indexing time". Should I be concerned? This just feels like a deadlock issue.

 

[johto]

Sorry. One more question. I know that I have to be patient but 4 hours into this and I still do not see any indexing status bar progress on spotlight and the message is still "Estimating indexing time". Should I be concerned? This just feels like a deadlock issue.

I'm experiencing about same problems. My indexing seems to stall also on one point. I am now trying to exlude some files if its some corrupted files.

Dunno, maybe something broken with an apple updates?

I restored my machine from time machine. Last backup point was 3 weeks ago.

btw, seeing these repeating on the console messages:

17.7.2008 9.05.39 com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10cb40.mdworker[631]) Exited: Killed 
17.7.2008 9.09.43 com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10cb40.mdworker[644]) Exited: Killed 
17.7.2008 9.13.47 com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10cb40.mdworker[647]) Exited: Killed 
17.7.2008 9.17.51 com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10cb40.mdworker[658]) Exited: Killed 
17.7.2008 9.21.55 com.apple.launchd[1] (0x10cb40.mdworker[667]) Exited: Killed

I have tons of pdf ebooks and stuff, overall 250 gigs of files to be re-indexed. I will try to exlude some of the heaviest files and see if it finishes and then re-add them later time. My other smaller external drive indexed ok which have more simpler files, like .zip archives ...


UPDATE: I exclded almost all main directories, and then i succesfully got it to finnish the basic indexing of my system drive. Now i will remove those exclusion one by one to see where if any problem still remains.

UPDATE2: Seems to work. Already indexed Developer, Library, and currently System is indexing...

See Picture:

Click for full size - Uploaded with plasq's Skitch

 

[johto]

Ok. The indexing is done succesfully. I made the indexing "by the book". I also put me back to "admin" before i left it doing it overnight. Maybe that was the cause, because i had my account degraded to normal user. Oh well, now its all indexed and happy after hard crunching over night