Boy, did I mess up Finder

Thanatoast

Thanatoast

macrumors 65816
Okay, so I was encoding a DVD and didn't realize how much space I needed or how much I had left and managed to get my HD down to 0KB available. Ouch. But, no problem, right? Delete, clean up. Burn some stuff - it'll be fine. Except it's not.

I freed up about 16 gigs (that's total on my 160 gig drive). I encoded and burned the DVD. Great! It worked! Visualhub automatically deletes the temp files, right? Except I only have 12 gigs left. So something's still out there...

Here's where the interesting bit begins. I click finder and cmd-F so I can search for any really big files - say disk images. Nothing. Okay, I try large movies. Nothing. Hmm. How about any movies? Nothing.

No movies on my harddrive? iTunes begs to differ. I open up spotlight and type in "iTunes". Nothing. iTunes isn't on my harddrive. In fact, nothing is - at least so say Finder and Spotlight.

Everything seems to work fine. I'm typing this post right now on my mac. iTunes, iChat, Safari all work. Finder is borked.

I repaired permissions and rebooted on the off-chance it might shake something loose, but no luck.

Any ideas?
 
Do you keep Applications in your Finder sidebar? Since that's a direct link to your /Applications directory, if you see your applications listed there, then they are on your hard drive. Or open Terminal and type "ls /Applications" if you don't keep the standard sidebar items.

Perhaps you've only borked Spotlight. Try creating another account and searching there. But I'm not sure what to do if it is indeed Spotlight that's the problem.

Oh, and use something like WhatSize or JDiskReport to find what's taking up disk space.
 
Thanks for the quick response!

In answer to your question, no I don't keep applications in my finder sidebar, only what was defaulted on there to begin with. I can still use the dock and double-click icons to navigate, I just can't get Spotlight or regular, old cmd-F to function. cmd-F just searches and searches with no result and Spotlight sits there like a bump on a log. It's really strange.
 
It sounds like spotlight got messed up somehow. I second the suggestion to try with a different account.
 
If you have the original Mac OS X Installment discs you should be able to reinstall the OS right? Try it! I did something stupid once and it worked! (It only takes a couple of hours:D)

I'm sorry three hours at least!
 
Only reinstall as a last resort.

Logging out and back in again might fix it. Restarting might fix it. Removing the spotlight preferences file (/Users/<your name>/Library/Preferences/com.apple.spotlight.plist) might fix it.

Reinstalling probably would fix it, but there's no point in wasting time until you've tried everything else.
 
Just use a utility like Onyx to repair Spotlight and the LaunchServices database.

Easy.

EDIT: Obviously, if you have already created a new account and are still in that one, make sure you switch back into your old account with the problems before running Onyx.
 
davidjearly said:
Just use a utility like Onyx to repair Spotlight and the LaunchServices database.

Easy.

EDIT: Obviously, if you have already created a new account and are still in that one, make sure you switch back into your old account with the problems before running Onyx.
Click to expand...

No, no, no. Don't use Onyx.

Let's backtrack a bit. You probably lost your spotlight index when you put the squeeze on your HD.

Try this in terminal to reindex. It may take a while, a full reindex after my spotlight index went dead took almost 2 days.
Code: 
sudo mdutil -s /

Indexing should be enabled.

Code: 
sudo mdutil -E /

This above deletes the index and has spotlight reindex from scratch.
 
Doesnt anyone, at least with external drives, find Spotlight a bit of a performance hog?

My data transfers drop significantly when indexing, so much so that I turned Spotlight completely and utterly OFF that scratch disk.

I mean, Spotlight is cool n all, but I hate to always know when its running just by the performance drop and the hard drive madly working away. I hate it.
 
Sdashiki said:
Doesnt anyone, at least with external drives, find Spotlight a bit of a performance hog?

My data transfers drop significantly when indexing, so much so that I turned Spotlight completely and utterly OFF that scratch disk.

I mean, Spotlight is cool n all, but I hate to always know when its running just by the performance drop and the hard drive madly working away. I hate it.
Click to expand...

Spotlight is only a performance hog while it's building the index. Currently my computer has been indexed properly and the mdimport daemons are using no CPU cycles.
 
Sdashiki said:
Doesnt anyone, at least with external drives, find Spotlight a bit of a performance hog?

My data transfers drop significantly when indexing, so much so that I turned Spotlight completely and utterly OFF that scratch disk.

I mean, Spotlight is cool n all, but I hate to always know when its running just by the performance drop and the hard drive madly working away. I hate it.
Click to expand...

...But it only indexes en masse ONCE. After that, it's as you change files, so it's really not that big a deal.
 
SC68Cal said:
Then I would ask why you are bothering to index. Turn it off.

Code: 
sudo mdutil -E -i off <VOLUME PATH>
Click to expand...

I do, did and keep it that way.

BUT, OSX doesnt keep the "privacy" setting in the Spotlight system pref panel if you unmount the drive....meaning restart the computer or log out. So, its a moot point.

I can keep setting it to OFF for this particular drive, but it always comes back. Which isnt such a big deal but its always recreating the invisible folders and all that crap.
 
Too much stuff dude...

There is no way you computer can run effectively with that little of HD space. Dude you need twice as much room on your hard drive as what you are burning to dvd / cd. And before you try to clear off just enough you have to understand that you must leave 10% of your hard drive empty to have the necessary room for typical disk read / write (i know it's not using 16gb...but 10% is the standard). So if you have a 160 gb then you need 16 gb of space on your hard drive that is free or you will probably have more problems then just finder not working. You may want to back-up before your hard drive is inaccesable.

You don't have to leave 16 gb free but you may want to look up one of those "how to replace my hard drive..." before your computer stops working.
 
davidjearly said:
So what exactly is wrong with using Onyx?

Nothing.
Click to expand...
Depends. If you're aware that all you're doing is running a heavy GUI for essentially feather light programs you already have on disk and if you have absolutely no ambition whatsoever to learn any more about the computer you so love - then fine. For that matter you could just "wipe and reinstall" every fortnight too.

Another issue is how OnyX manages sudo. Previously it passed your admin password on the command line, meaning you were toast for intruders. I don't know if it still does this. If it's still running commands through AppleScript then it's likely this is still happening, as Apple explicitly will not enhance AppleScript to make things easier.
 
Sdashiki said:
I can keep setting it to OFF for this particular drive, but it always comes back. Which isnt such a big deal but its always recreating the invisible folders and all that crap.
Click to expand...
Then yank its bundle outta there.
 
QuarterSwede said:
A lot of people don't care if he's just using terminal commands in a front end.
Click to expand...
You mean /you/ don't care? Or have you conducted extensive formalized interviews and surveys on the subject?

BTW what is 1/4 Swede?
 
Fairly said:
Depends. If you're aware that all you're doing is running a heavy GUI for essentially feather light programs you already have on disk and if you have absolutely no ambition whatsoever to learn any more about the computer you so love - then fine. For that matter you could just "wipe and reinstall" every fortnight too.

Another issue is how OnyX manages sudo. Previously it passed your admin password on the command line, meaning you were toast for intruders. I don't know if it still does this. If it's still running commands through AppleScript then it's likely this is still happening, as Apple explicitly will not enhance AppleScript to make things easier.
Click to expand...

I don't believe that Applescript was ever intended to invoke the sudo command. It sends information in the clear, it's perhaps the only way it can interface with the terminal.
 
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