<< Solved >> [Solved] Crazy mdworker | Random Crashes

[papadiche]

Hey all,

I've been using my hackintosh for about a year now and everything works flawlessly except... once in a blue moon, mdworker will go crazy and the computer will kernel panic. Almost always the final line before an actual kernel panic is just another mdworker line, such as the ones viewable in the screenshot.

After restart, mdworker usually will activate and cause another crash. Rinse and repeat 2-6 times before the computer stays on and mdworker goes dormant until the next time. I am on macOS 10.13.4 dual-booted with Windows. Any idea what could be causing a kernel panic?

If I have Console.app open when mdworker starts to go nuts, I can Force Quit the process over and over in Activity Monitor.app until it finally subsides.

Any help would be thoroughly appreciated!

 

[papadiche]

Anyone have a lead?

Thanks!

 

[UtterDisbelief]

Anyone have a lead?

Thanks!

Hi there,

Forgive me, but I can't see how your Hack' is working flawlessly with so little in the config.plist. That would be very unusual.

What's more that serial-number - and lack of a full SMBIOS - is going to cause all kinds of unpredictability including the possibility of getting locked out of iCloud services - unless of course you simply don't use them.

Did you do a standard UniBeast install? What version macOS?

Personally, if this was my build I'd take time to create a proper SMBIOS and review all the kexts - or lack of - that are installed.

 

[papadiche]

Hi there,

Forgive me, but I can't see how your Hack' is working flawlessly with so little in the config.plist. That would be very unusual.

What's more that serial-number - and lack of a full SMBIOS - is going to cause all kinds of unpredictability including the possibility of getting locked out of iCloud services - unless of course you simply don't use them.

Did you do a standard UniBeast install? What version macOS?

Personally, if this was my build I'd take time to create a proper SMBIOS and review all the kexts - or lack of - that are installed.

I installed a year ago so forgive me if I don't remember every step. Here's what I think I did:

1) Download macOS High Sierra on my Late 2013 MacBook Pro
2) Partition a blank 16GB USB 2.0 drive to have a 200MB Master Boot Record EFI with remainder unalloccated
3) Make a USB 2.0 install disk per Apple.com's instructions (which formats the unallocated space)
4) Install Clover r4411 to the 16GB USB 2.0 drive
5) Remove .IAPhysical Media from the 16GB USB 2.0 drive
6) Copy FakeSMC.kext to EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other
7) Copy apfs.efi to EFI/CLOVER/drivers64UEFI
8) Add nv_disable=1 in config.plist
9) Plug 16GB USB 2.0 drive into a motherboard-soldered USB port
10) Boot the Hackintosh and install
11) Use Kextbeast to install FakeSMC.kext + Lilu.kext + AppleALC.kext + AtherosE2200Ethernet.kext + IntelMausiEthernet.kext + XHCI-200-series-injector.kext + USBInjectAll.kext
12) Create a USB 3.0 DSDT and place in EFI/CLOVER/ACPI/patched
13) Use Clover Configurator to input a Product Name, Serial Number, and SmUUID
14) Install nVidia Web Drivers (since I use a GTX 1060 3GB)

Looking at a couple guides, the only thing I see missing from my SMBIOS is the Board Serial Number. My Serial Number is technically legit per Apple's requirements and I'm able to FaceTime, AirDrop, and send iMessages perfectly.

What would you like me to input/change in the SMBIOS?

Thanks for the response!! Much appreciated

 

[UtterDisbelief]

... Looking at a couple guides, the only thing I see missing from my SMBIOS is the Board Serial Number. My Serial Number is technically legit per Apple's requirements and I'm able to FaceTime, AirDrop, and send iMessages perfectly ...

Okay - that comes as a great surprise. I will have to do more research to see why your serial-number is classed as legitimate etc.

@P1LGRIM 's excellent guide to configuring iMessage shows you how to build an SMBIOS for the service and check your serial-number. I would follow this. However, of course that is your choice.

As for the kernel panic ...

"mdworker' is a part of the Spotlight indexing system, as far as I understand. Do you have a main drive with different partitions in different formats?

 

[papadiche]

Okay - that comes as a great surprise. I will have to do more research to see why your serial-number is classed as legitimate etc. ...

Yeah I remember entering a 12-digit serial number but iMessage didn't work and I read on some thread if you increase it to 16-digit that works for iMac18,3 but researching it again that doesn't sound accurate. All post-2010 Apple computers appear to use 12-digit serial numbers. Do you think this could cause kernel panics via mdworker? How about not having a Board Serial Number?

Sounds far-fetched and/or unrelated to me. Only other thing I can add is that I have Dropbox enabled on login. The same mdworker crash happened to me yesterday but after two loops I quit Dropbox as soon as I logged in and though mdworker continued to populate like crazy in Console.app, the computer did not kernel panic.

... "mdworker' is a part of the Spotlight indexing system, as far as I understand. Do you have a main drive with different partitions in different formats? ...

Negative. My main boot drive is a 2TB 960 Pro M.2 with only the EFI Clover boot partition and an APFS macOS partition.

 

[UtterDisbelief]

Yeah I remember entering a 12-digit serial number but iMessage didn't work and I read on some thread if you increase it to 16-digit that works for iMac18,3 but researching it again that doesn't sound accurate. All post-2010 Apple computers appear to use 12-digit serial numbers. Do you think this could cause kernel panics via mdworker? How about not having a Board Serial Number?

Sounds far-fetched and/or unrelated to me. Only other thing I can add is that I have Dropbox enabled on login. The same mdworker crash happened to me yesterday but after two loops I quit Dropbox as soon as I logged in and though mdworker continued to populate like crazy in Console.app, the computer did not kernel panic.


Negative. My main boot drive is a 2TB 960 Pro M.2 with only the EFI Clover boot partition and an APFS macOS partition.

I've no idea if the serial-number could cause a system component to go haywire but I DO worry Apple might see an unfamiliar S/N and block an account. But that's none of my business...

As for the kernel panics...

Your installation method is not one of the ones detailed here, so it is not easy for anyone to be able to diagnose where the problem might have been introduced. If you had installed using UniBeast and MultiBeast we might get a clearer picture, because the hardware you have in your Profile looks to be fully compatible. Even the 960 Pro is supported, I believe (at least since High Sierra).

 

[papadiche]

I've no idea if the serial-number could cause a system component to go haywire but I DO worry Apple might see an unfamiliar S/N and block an account. But that's none of my business...

Gotcha. Will consider that. Thanks!

As for the kernel panics...

Your installation method is not one of the ones detailed here, so it is not easy for anyone to be able to diagnose where the problem might have been introduced. If you had installed using UniBeast and MultiBeast we might get a clearer picture, because the hardware you have in your Profile looks to be fully compatible. Even the 960 Pro is supported, I believe (at least since High Sierra).

Hmm... seems like my method is the same as Unibeast + Multibeast though; I did partition the install USB and install Clover as Unibeast would've, and did install kexts as Multibeast would've.

Would you nonetheless advise me to clean install a month or so after macOS Catalina is released? No other solution(s)?
Only downside is I may have to buy a "new" AMD graphics card since nVidia is unlikely to be supported going forward.

Thanks again for your help!

 

[papadiche]

Update: Am able to force the crash at will. If I mount my EFI partition and attempt to copy all files to my Desktop (or any other partition including on an external disk), the computer immediately reboots without any warning, without any crash log, and without a "Something went wrong" dialog upon next login.

I have tried: Updating/recreating my USB DSDT, Thunderbolt 3 DSDT, and my CPU power management DSDT. No change in outcome(s). I can also say though that after running the following commands, the computer hasn't restarted spontaneously on its own:

sudo mdutil -a -i off
sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100/*

Again, I can force it to spontaneously restart by mounting the EFI partition and attempting to copy all the files and folders in one batch. Copying each individual file one at a time does not cause a restart.

Any takers?

 

[papadiche]

Update: With Spotlight fully disabled (see above), I made two files at the root of my EFI drive with the following commands:

cd /Volumes/EFI
touch .noindex
touch .metadata_never_index

I then deleted every single other hidden file on the EFI partition starting with a .
(Note: I'm absolutely positive this can be done via Terminal but I couldn't find the correct command so I did it through Finder by hitting Shift+Cmd+. and individually navigating through each folder and deleting the files that started with a .)

Then I installed Clover r4961 and kept only the following in my EFI/CLOVER/drivers64UEFI:

• apfs.efi
• EmuVariableUefi-64.efi
• OsxAptioFix2Drv-64.efi

And kept only the following in my EFI/CLOVER/kexts/Other:

• AppleALC.kext
• AtherosE2200Ethernet.kext
• FakeSMC.kext
• IntelMausiEthernet.kext
• Lilu.kext
• USBInjectAll.kext

And so far we are all good! No crashes and when I try to copy my entire EFI, there are no intermittent reboots. I will report any further findings! Hope this helps somebody in the future