Does anyone know how to deal with frozen barber-pole Spotlight indexing in Mac OS X Leopard?

Wow, mrzarquon! I do think you've cracked it! I did as you said (thanks for your considerate instructions and spacing, btw) and got: Macintosh:~ miguelcardoso$ sudo rm -r "/.Spotlight-V100" Password: Macintosh:~ miguelcardoso$ sudo mdutil -E / /: Indexing enabled. And indeed normal indexing has begun and is proceeding swiftly, with an encouraging indication of "2 hours remaining"! To be frank, I'd never asked a technical question online before, because I never thought anyone would bother and, if someone would, they'd need someone with a minimum ability in order to explain the problem. Well, you and the all the other helpful fellow users (thanks for that essential password info, zsa zsa!) have proven me wonderfully wrong. Cheers! This only applies, of course, if it doesn't hang again. ,)

Thats good to hear. Keep me updated, just shoot me an email when you get a resolution form apple / if diskwarrior did it, my address is in my profile. (I have a suspicion I might have to deal with this again as more users start upgrading to leopard).

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be a "here is this one file that is causing problems", so I would begin to suspect the hard drive (but disk util hasn't reported anything) or directory structure. *South Carolina accent* Well, mrzarquon, wasn't I saying, from the very beginning, it was directory structure all along? No, you´re right. Meanwhile, I'm really impressed with Euro-Apple: the wise and resourceful guy I'd talked to yesterday phoned me (from Cork in Ireland) and talked me through a series of tests for two hours or so. Amazing. Summing up: Spotlight is indexing away with mdworker quite frantic but no data/sec is read or written. (When indexing from the terminal, data read & written/sec was normal ). Trashing all 3 relevant caches and restarting Spotlight made no difference. Same with other efforts. So I'm doing exactly as you say (and Clever Apple Guy agrees - he even noted one of your cunning sudo moves - that deadly Spotlight-V100 one) and have taken Spotlight out of my life and computer. The rest of the system is running swiftly and smoothly and I'll wait calmly for the Apple engineers to analyse the data capture folder I sent them and start saving up for diskwarrior. Thank you with a big brass band, mrzarquon and everybody else who helped! I'll report back when the problem is solved! Cheers!

Yep indexes it's own files, and doesn't appear to modify the original PDF, so I don't imagine a possible conflict there. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be a "here is this one file that is causing problems", so I would begin to suspect the hard drive (but disk util hasn't reported anything) or directory structure. You say you have 200gb free, so running low on disk space shouldn't be a problem. I would disable spotlight, and use the other search tool you found, until you can pickup a copy of diskwarrior to run on it. To be on the safe side, I would also make a copy / burn a dvd of all your important files, incase this is symptomatic of a slow hard drive failure.

Hi mrzarquon! Good morning! Just thought I'd dash off a brief note to thank you for the excellent tip: gazing at the file-munching in mdworker has raised this nightmare to the level of an average soap opera. It's slow but things do end up by happening, if you're patient and undemanding enough. Meanwhile, *cue theme from "Gone With The Wind"* I left Spotlight running for another 12 hours and it seemed to be slowly making its way through. But today it's back to barber-pole - the little convoluted Sevillian bastard - but, after reading your kind answer, it seems not to be completely hung, as it is indeed indexing stuff, in its own fashion. Here are my classic ignoramus's thoughts, strictly for laughs: I wonder whether http://www.ironicsoftware.com/yep/index.html is making things stickier. It's a wonderful tagging app which I recently bought (i.e. can easily reinstall and relicense) to deal with all my pdf files and with which I have been delighted. I understand it draws on Spotlight to do its work and perhaps Leopard, with its Quicklook and better indexing, is having a jealous tiff with it? Anyway, to show how the slow-moving boa constrictor is winding its way up the diskus tree swallowing one fat squirrel at a time, here are two fascinating snapshots, still warm from the mdworker : At 13h56m Lisbon time (I'm cutting length and line-breaking to avoid breaking the page) PDF.mdimporter/Contents/MacOS/PDF /private/var/folders/zz/zzzivhr /System/Library/ColorSync/Profiles /sRGB Profile.icc /Audio.mdimporter/Contents/MacOS/Audio Application.mdimporter/Contents /MacOS/Application /Caches/com.apple.IntlDataCache.le.tecx /Archives.mdimporter/Contents/MacOS/Archives /System/Library/Spotlight /Mail.mdimporter/Contents/MacOS/Mail /System/Library/Spotlight/MacOS/Automator /System/Library/Frameworks/ /Library/Fonts/Arial/..namedfork/rsrc /System/Library/Spotlight/ Image.mdimporter/Contents/MacOS/Image /System/Library/Fonts/Symbol.dfont /Library/Fonts/Arial Black/..namedfork/rsrc //RichText.mdimporter/Contents /MacOS/RichText /.mdimporter/Contents/MacOS/Bookmarks /Library/Fonts/Georgia/..namedfork/rsrc /Library/Fonts/Impact.ttf /Library/Fonts/Times New Roman /..namedfork/rsrc /Library/Fonts/Verdana/..namedfork/rsrc /System/Library/Frameworks /ApplicationServices /System/Library/Frameworks/ LatentSemanticMapping. /Library/Fonts/Arial Narrow /..namedfork/rsrc /usr/share/icu/icudt36l.dat /Library/Fonts/Optima.dfont /Library/Fonts/Arial.ttf /Library/Spotlight/Microsoft Office Frameworks/Message.framework /Versions/B/Message /Library/Fonts/Palatino/..namedfork/rsrc /System/Library/Fonts/ZapfDingbats.dfont /RawCamera.bundle/Contents/ MacOS/RawCamera /Library/Fonts/Andale Mono.ttf /Library/Fonts/Courier New /..namedfork/rsrc /System/Library/Fonts/Times.dfont /Library/Fonts/Tahoma Bold.ttf /System/Library/Fonts/Courier.dfont /Library/QuickTime /DivX Decoder.component/ /Library/Fonts/Tahoma.ttf /Library/Fonts/Trebuchet MS/..namedfork/rsrc /System/Library/Fonts/Helvetica.dfont /Library/Fonts/GillSans.dfont /Library/Caches/com.apple .LaunchServices-023501.csstore //Library/Fonts/Comic Sans MS/ ..namedfork/rsrc /System/Library/Fonts/AppleGothic.ttf /Users/miguelcardoso/Livros/A Ler /ABC of Palliative Care.pdf /dev/null /dev/null /dev/null count=0, state=0x2 /Library/Spotlight /System/Library/Spotlight /Users/miguelcardoso/Library/Preferences /.DS_Store count=0, state=0x2 /ABC of Palliative Care.pdf /Users/miguelcardoso/Library/ Application Support/AddressBoo k/AddressBook-v22.abcddb /A/Frameworks/HIToolbox.framework /Versions/A/Resources/English .lproj/Localized.rsrc /System/Library/Frameworks /ApplicationServices.framework At 14h14m, this much (at least) had been added: /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices. /System/Library/Spotlight/PDF .mdimporter/Contents/MacOS/PDF /private/var/folders/zz/zzzivhrRnAmv iuee++++ME+++42/-Caches /CoreGraphics.framework/Versions/ A/Resources/libFontStreams.A.dylib /System/Library/ColorSync/Profiles /sRGB Profile.icc /System/Library/Spotlight /Audio.mdimporter/Contents/MacOS/Audio /System/Library/Spotlight//MacOS/Application /System/Library/Caches/com .apple.IntlDataCache.le.tecx /System/Library/Spotlights/MacOS/Archives /System/Library/Spotlight/ Mail.mdimporter/Contents/MacOS/Mail /System/Library/Spotlight//Automator /System/Library/Frs/A/ExceptionHandling /Library/Fonts/Arial/..namedfork/rsrc /System/Library/Spotlightr /Contents/MacOS/Image /Library/Fonts/Palatino/..namedfork/rsrc /System/Library/Fonts/ZapfDingbats.dfont /System/Library/CoreServices/RawCamera .bundle/Contents/MacOS/RawCamera /Library/Fonts/Andale Mono.ttf /Library/Fonts/Courier New/ ..namedfork/rsrc /System/Library/Frameworks /Carbon.framework /Versions/A/Frameworks/HIToolbo x.framework /Versions/A/Resources/English .lproj/Localized.rsrc /System/Library/Fonts/Times.dfont /Library/Fonts/Tahoma Bold.ttf /System/Library/Fonts/Courier.dfont /Library/QuickTime/DivX Decode r.component/Contents /MacOS/DivX Decoder /Library/Fonts/Tahoma.ttf /Library/Fonts/Trebuchet MS/namedfork/rsrc /Library/Fonts/Arial Bold.ttf /System/Library/Fonts/Helvetica.dfont /Library/Fonts/Arial Italic.ttf /Library/Fonts/GillSans.dfont /Library/Fonts/Times New Roman.ttf /Library/Caches/com.apple. LaunchServices-023501.csstore //Users/miguelcardoso/Livros /Anthropology of Naming.pdf /Library/Fonts/Comic Sans M S/..namedfork/rsrc /System/Library/Fonts/AppleGothic.ttf /dev/null /dev/null /dev/null count=0, state=0x2 /Library/Spotlight /System/Library/Spotlight /Users/miguelcardoso/Livros/Livros/.DS_Store count=0, state=0x2 /Users/miguelcardoso/L/Livros/Anthropology of Naming.pdf Good stuff, no? It looks like it's indexing, bringing in new stuff, though with a lot of repetition (e.g. Palliative Care pdf and Anthropology of Naming pdf) even though no longer giving me the consolatory courtesy of the progress bar. I wonder whether I should just wait another day or two before buying DiskWarrior(which I can't really afford right now). But again. Thank you so much, mrzarquon! You're a gentleman and a scholar, Sir! All the best to you!

Miguel- From the linked forum, this step appears to help locate the bad file the index is getting stuck on, if you feel like giving it another shot: Go to activity monitor, look for mdimport, get info, and then go to the "files in use" tab. At the bottom, after all the frameworks, you'll see the file spotlight is currently indexing. Trash it or move it to a drive not on your mac, or rename it to a type that isn't indexed by spotlight, then kill mdimport. (in leopard it is mdworker instead) If it is getting stuck on multiple files, in random locations, it may speak of a larger issue, possible hard drive failure or directory problems (diskwarrior will fix the latter).

there´s a guy there (...) who has the very same problem but not as clean and sure as yours. Hee hee - I meant his solution isn't as clear and sure as yours, not that you both have problems but his are messier and more dubious!

Now you at least has a system that isn't continually trying to index itself Looks like a desirable feature from here, mrzarquin! Many thanks for the nifty Plan B. I've just come across http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/freeware/ which does a great little job (in case anyone's in a similar situation) and will tide me over until Spotlight is able to function properly. I've been putting off buying DiskWarrior but the time has clearly come, what the hell. I did look through the apple forum and there´s a guy http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8300945231/m/263005028831?r=873007028831#873007028831, name of TC!, about 3/4 down the page, who has the very same problem but not as clean and sure as yours. I hope some day I may be a fraction of the help you were to me! All the best and a glass of port raised to your health, mrzarquon, indexed and registered to perfection!

Miguel- Thanks, I try my hardest to not be the IT nerd everyone is afraid to ask questions of. It sounds like it might be an issue with file names or structure on your disk that have invalid paths etc. which can cause all sorts of weirdness when spotlight is trying to figure out their content. My next step would be to turn off spotlight on the drive, so it stops indexing (Open spotlight in system preferences, and click on the privacy tab, then drag "Macintosh HD" into it). It will ignore and not try to spotlight your hard drive. Spotlight wont work for searching file content, but you should still be able to find files by their name. Now you atleast has a system that isn't continually trying to index itself. (but no indexing). I would then run DiskWarrior (http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/support.html) which will scan and verify that your directory information is intact, and replace it (not deleting files, just making sure the catalogue is redone properly) with a proper version. It is not a magic bullet, but anyone who has a mac should have it, as it is a great troubleshooting utility for these situations. (you can boot off the CD they send with it to run the utility, as the software you install the computer isn't updated for Leopard, but it can fix the hard drive fine if there are problems). You can also try apple's online discussion forum, and see if there is something I missed (i haven't seen this problem before). http://discussions.apple.com/index.jspa