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Last active December 20, 2015 02:09
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Spying on Spotlight with fs_usage. http://superuser.com/a/46381
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To see what mds and more importantly its child mdworker is actually doing - use fs_usage to log what files it is opening:

sudo fs_usage -w -f filesys mdworker

Though there is a lot of unintelligable stuff in there, it does tell you when it opens a file to begin reading from it. Copying a PDF into my filesystem shows mdworker opening the file then immediately after lots of activity...

p.s. if you want a little less detail, this will just list the open file points:

sudo fs_usage -w -f filesys mdworker | egrep "open"

--The Tentacle
http://superuser.com/a/46381

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