[Kickaha]

In case anyone else is seeing the following errors in their Console logs, and also experiencing random Spotlight indexing issues, drive slowdowns, etc...

4/2/13 5:09:34.374 PM mdworker[66381]: Unable to talk to lsboxd4/2/13 5:09:34.375 PM mdworker[66380]: Unable to talk to lsboxd4/2/13 5:09:34.554 PM sandboxd[66382]: ([66381]) mdworker(66381) deny mach-lookup com.apple.ls.boxd4/2/13 5:09:34.575 PM sandboxd[66382]: ([66380]) mdworker(66380) deny mach-lookup com.apple.ls.boxd

Try removing third party importers until you find an offending one. To find all the importers on your system, in Terminal, do:

find -x / -iname \*.mdimporter -exec ls -lndotT {} +

You'll get a bunch of "Permission denied" warnings, ignore them, and wait for the payoff at the end. It will look something like:

drwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 30 01:24:52 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/Mail.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 30 01:24:35 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/Application.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 30 01:24:34 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/Notes.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 25 23:24:38 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/Chat.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 22 20:13:05 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/vCard.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 20 15:37:33 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/iCal.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 20 15:25:14 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/Automator.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 20 15:24:52 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/QuartzComposer.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 20 15:23:38 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/Archives.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 20 15:10:32 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/SystemPrefs.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 20 15:07:38 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/RichText.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 20 15:05:32 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/Font.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 20 14:56:41 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/CoreMedia.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 20 14:09:30 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/iPhoto.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 20 14:09:24 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/iPhoto8.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 20 14:09:21 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/PS.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 20 14:09:19 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/Image.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 20 14:09:16 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/PDF.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 20 13:46:05 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/Bookmarks.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 20 13:44:14 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/MIDI.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 20 13:44:12 2012 /System/Library/Spotlight/Audio.mdimporterdrwxrwxr-x  3 0    102 Sep 20 12:01:36 2010 /Library/Spotlight/GBSpotlightImporter.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 20 13:43:16 2012 /Library/Spotlight/iBooksAuthor.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 20 13:42:42 2012 /Library/Spotlight/iWork.mdimporterdrwxrwxr-x  3 0    102 Sep 17 03:52:09 2010 /Library/Spotlight/LogicPro.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Jun 27 00:00:00 2011 /Library/Spotlight/Microsoft Office.mdimporterdrwxrwxr-x  3 0    102 Dec 17 14:10:38 2010 /Library/Spotlight/ParallelsMD.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Dec 21 09:31:50 2010 /Applications/GarageBand.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/GBSpotlightImporter.mdimporterdrwxrwxr-x  3 0    102 Mar 10 00:00:00 2011 /Applications/Microsoft Office 2011/Microsoft Outlook.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/Microsoft Outlook.mdimporterdr-xr-xr-x  3 0    102 Oct 18 10:25:35 2009 /Applications/NeoOffice.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/neolight.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Feb  6 11:21:57 2013 /Applications/OmniPlan.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/OPMDImporter.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Mar 11 17:51:24 2013 /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/uuid.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 0    102 Mar 11 17:48:17 2013 /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Applications/Application Loader.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/MZSpotlight.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 501  102 Dec  7 07:11:33 2010 /Applications/MacGourmet Deluxe.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/MacGourmetImporter.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 501  102 Apr 29 16:07:55 2008 /Applications/OmniGraffle Professional4.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/OmniGraffle.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 501  102 Jun 15 15:49:45 2010 /Applications/OmniGraffle Professional5.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/OmniGraffle.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 501  102 Jun 15 15:20:23 2010 /Applications/OmniGraffle 5.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/OmniGraffle.mdimporterdrwxrwxr-x@ 3 501  102 Jan 17 07:16:18 2011 /Applications/OpenOffice.org.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/OOoSpotlightImporter.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 501  102 Mar 13 20:41:04 2011 /Applications/TeX/BibDesk.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/BibImporter.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 501  102 Jun 11 15:18:59 2010 /Applications/TeX/TeX Live Utility.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/DVIImporter.mdimporterdrwxr-xr-x  3 501  102 Jul  3 09:18:54 2011 /Applications/TeX/TeXShop.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/TeX.mdimporter

... except it will be all jumbled up, I sorted these out manually to make it more clear.

The first group is all Apple importers.

The second group is a combination of Apple installed and third party installed importers in /Library.

The third group is a combination of Apple and third-party importers installed by root (ie, the App Store).

The fourth group is apps installed by a user.

Suspect importers include those with the oldest dates (in this case NeoOffice and OmniGraffle Pro 4) because they are most likely to predate the new sandboxing requirements. Also, I now notice the two copies/versions of the GarageBand importer, one in /Library, one in the application itself.

To remove the importer, you should be able to simply zip up the app, remove the active copy, then reboot. (I'm tracking down if there's an importer cache somewhere, but I don't believe so.)

Then, check your Console logs again and see if it goes away.

[chucker]

Neat. So far, I've updated various (rarely-used) OMNI apps and removed GBSpotlightImporter.mdimporter, which in my case was from 2009. I'm guessing this (it being way outdated) is because I don't really use Garage Band. Doesn't seem to be enough just yet…

Other Mountain Lion mysteries:

• CalendarAgent (and, less frequently, AddressBookSomethingOrOther) randomly taking up 100% CPU for a minute, then quieting down again
• Messages like "4/3/13 9:59:32.621 PM Finder[15854]: [QL] Can't get plugin bundle info at XTUM/ -- file://localhost/"

The former has suggestions like deleting all calendars and somesuch; I've tried countless times. The latter may be a case of old .qlgenerator bundles?

[tomoe]

Hmm. I'm running 10.8.2 here and looking at the system.log file, I seem to have a plethora of these errors. I've also been getting the random Spotlight indexing issues.

Dumb question: what exactly do the importers do?

[Mugge]

Hmmm, I've had a couple of incidents of inexplicable Spotlight indexing too. So dumber question: Should ordinary users do something about this?

[chucker]

Originally Posted by tomoe Dumb question: what exactly do the importers do?

An mdimporter, short for metadata importer, tells Spotlight how to deal with a certain file format (or several). For instance, Microsoft Office.mdimporter contains code that analyzes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint(?) files, which Spotlight then indexes, so you can search those file's contents. For plain text files, this is trivial, for a complex format like Excel, the mdimporter gives hints which portions of the file are worth indexing (and how to access them), and as a more special case, for a image files like say a JPEG, the mdimporter focuses on information such as the dimensions and other metadata (e.g.: when was the image taken? with what sort of camera model?).

Worst thing to happen with a mdimporter missing: Spotlight won't be able search within files of that type.