MDDIAGNOSE(8) System Manager's Manual MDDIAGNOSE(8)

mddiagnosegather information to aid in diagnosing Spotlight issues

mddiagnose -h

mddiagnose [-f path] [-e path] [-p path] [-n]

The mddiagnose tool gathers system and Spotlight information in order to assist Apple when investigating issues related to Spotlight. A great deal of information is harvested, spanning system state, system and Spotlight details.

  • A spindump of the system
  • Several seconds of top output
  • Individual samples of mds and mdworker
  • Paths for all files used by Spotlight to contain its database on every volume
  • All system logs
  • All spin and crash reports for the following processes:
    • mds
    • mdworker

  • Recent spin and crash reports for the following processes, for all local users:
    • mds
    • mdworker

  • The query text and result quality statistics for recent Spotlight searches. The actual results of the searches are not gathered
  • General information about disks and mounted network shares
  • The path of the last file indexed by each mdworker process on behalf of Spotlight. The path of the last file which resulted in a crash of an mdworker process. In each case, only the path is gathered, not the contents of the file
  • Spotlight configuration for each volume currently mounted on your system. This includes the path and size of all files used internally by Spotlight as well as a listing of paths that are user excluded from indexing
  • Comprehensive information about internal state of Spotlight

  • No user data is harvested from any volume
  • No paths or files found by any search are returned
  • No database storage or user files are returned
  • No authentication credentials are harvested from the system

Print full usage.
Gather a subset of the normal report.
path
Write the diagnostic to the specified path.
path
Gather Spotlight permissions and filter information. Run as owner of that file.

mddiagnose exits with status 0 if there were no internal errors encountered during the diagnostic, or >0 when an error unrelated to external state occurs or unusable input is provided by the user.

15 March 2011 Mac OS X