syslogd, mdworker and mds ... oh My!

On or about 11/28/07 9:43 AM, thus spake "keith.kaiser27"
<keith.kaisergmail.com>:

> There is a very heavy thread on the Apple site about these three processes,
> mostly syslogd which hogs 75%-100% of your CPU when running. My CPU according
> to the Activity Monitor is running 100% almost all the time and the lions
> share of that is with syslogd.
>
> I've turned off Time Machine (whose time has not yet come) and closed every
> application except A.M. and Console and still I have 100% CPU usage. The
> Console system.log is very confusing on the subject, something about
> "Throttling Respawn: Will start in 10 seconds", and somthing about
> "com.mozy.backup" and ?????.... YIKES!

Well, com.mozy.backup is Mozy Backup. So if that's something you've
installed, uninstall it. Basically it sounds like you've either installed
some stuff that's causing this, or you've done your Leopard upgrade in a way
that leaves some old stuff present and the old stuff includes some bad
stuff, if you see what I mean. Something keeps trying to start up and
failing and that's what's giving your system all that trouble. syslogd is a
red herring; this just means that whoever is having trouble keeps writing to
the log. The culprit is lurking somewhere in your LaunchAgents,
LaunchDaemons, or StartupItems, but that's really not saying anything very
helpful... m.

On Wed, 28 Nov 2007, keith.kaiser27 wrote:

> There is a very heavy thread on the Apple site about these three
> processes, mostly syslogd which hogs 75%-100% of your CPU when
> running. My CPU according to the Activity Monitor is running 100%
> almost all the time and the lions share of that is with syslogd.
>
> I've turned off Time Machine (whose time has not yet come) and closed
> every application except A.M. and Console and still I have 100% CPU
> usage. The Console system.log is very confusing on the subject,
> something about "Throttling Respawn: Will start in 10 seconds", and
> somthing about "com.mozy.backup" and ?????.... YIKES!
>
> Anyone else experiencing this kind of mayhem? More importantly does
> anyone know how to fix it?

First of all, syslogd isn't your problem, it's just keeping a record of
the real problem. It's *always* running on all Macs, and it normally
never generates a noticeable CPU load. If it *is* producing a heavy
load, it's because something else has gone haywire.

The "com.mozy.backup" is your hint here. From a quick Google search:

    Mozy Backup is a cool online backup service, with versions for Macs
    and PCs. There are two types of Mozy accounts, Free, and Unlimited.
    Free comes with 2GB of space to back up to, while Unlimited can back
    up as much as you want. The unlimited plan costs $4.95 a month.

    The Mozy client for Mac (Beta, Universal, requires Tiger or later)
    has two modes, both of which can be used at the same time. The first
    mode is Backup Sets, where you can choose a spotlight query, and
    have all files that spotlight returns be backed up. It has some
    predefined back up sets, for things like iTunes library, Word Files,
    etc. The second mode is where you can manually select files and
    folders to back up.

http://www.iappblog.com/mozy-backup-for-mac

So, at a wild guess, you must have Mozy installed, and Mozy hasn't yet
been updated to work properly on Leopard.

The "keeps respawning" line is a hint that it's a misbehaving launchd
job or something like that. Deleting or upgrading Mozy should fix it.


--
Chris Devers

on 11/28/07 12:43 PM, keith.kaiser27 at keith.kaisergmail.com wrote:

> There is a very heavy thread on the Apple site about these three processes,
> mostly syslogd which hogs 75%-100% of your CPU when running. My CPU according
> to the Activity Monitor is running 100% almost all the time and the lions
> share of that is with syslogd.

My CPU is running 100% of the time with a prog running background. What
happens (in Activity Monitor) when you run a heavy demand program? Is the
CPU released?

I launched first Photoshop then iPhoto on both the CPU usage dropped momentarily to about 25% but then quickly jumped back up to the high 90's and within 15 seconds to 100%.

I've searched using Spotlight for anything 'Mozy' with nothing being returned. At one time I did try them out but WOW that was a year ago and I thought I had dumped off my system completely.

On or about 11/29/07 8:14 AM, thus spake "keith.kaiser27"
<keith.kaisergmail.com>:

> I've searched using Spotlight for anything 'Mozy' with nothing being returned.
> At one time I did try them out but WOW that was a year ago and I thought I had
> dumped off my system completely.

The point is that you *didn't* dump it off your system entirely. You have to
look directly into the StartupItems, LaunchAgents, and LaunchDaemons
folders. My bet is that the culprit is in /Library/StartupItems. Under
Leopard there shouldn't be *anything* in there. m.

On Nov 29, 2007, at 11:14 AM, keith.kaiser27 wrote:

> I launched first Photoshop then iPhoto on both the CPU usage dropped
> momentarily to about 25% but then quickly jumped back up to the high
> 90's and within 15 seconds to 100%.

Right. Because Photoshop & iPhoto have nothing to do with the problem.
The answer was right there in the log file: Mozy.

> I've searched using Spotlight for anything 'Mozy' with nothing being
> returned. At one time I did try them out but WOW that was a year ago
> and I thought I had dumped off my system completely.

A Spotlight search is unlikely to find the system scheduled jobs that
are being complained about here.

If they have an uninstaller, you need to run it.

If they don't, and you want to keep it, consider upgrading, as a new
version may fix the bug. Maybe.

If that's not an option, and you can't figure out how to safely purge
the scheduled / boot tasks, you can consider doing an archive &
install of OSX, which should automatically move things like this into
a Previous Systems folder.

If you aren't comfortable with that either, make an appointment to get
it look at and they can do the archive & install for you.


--
Chris Devers

On Nov 28, 2007 12:43 PM, keith. kaiser27 <keith.kaisergmail.com> wrote:

--
--
David Weintraub
qazwartgmail.com

Mozy has been uninstalled. According to the system.log in Console my machine is still trying to use it. So I went to the Mozy web site and downloaded a new version, and loaded it. After doing that I ran their uninstall script (again), rebooted, etc. but the system.log in Console still says its trying to 'Throttling respawn' it.

I can find no reference to Mozy anyplace on my system including /Library/Startupitems. The people at Mozy told me to "uninstall using their script" when I told them I did that, the silence was deafening.

On 30-Nov-2007, at 14:11, keith.kaiser27 wrote:
> I can find no reference to Mozy anyplace on my system including /
> Library/Startupitems. The people at Mozy told me to "uninstall using
> their script" when I told them I did that, the silence was deafening.

Go to the finder, type command-f, type 'mozy' in the search field.

Now, click on the 'kind' drop down and select 'other'.

In the list that appears, type 'sys' in the search field (upper right
of the pane).

Choose the 'System Files' and then 'OK'.

Make sure the search is set to the entire computer. Should find the
sneaky file wherever it lives. If this does not work, try opening the
terminal and typing in

$ mdfind mozy

At 1:11 PM -0800 11/30/07, keith.kaiser27 wrote:
>Mozy has been uninstalled. According to the system.log in Console my
>machine is still trying to use it. So I went to the Mozy web site
>and downloaded a new version, and loaded it. After doing that I ran
>their uninstall script (again), rebooted, etc. but the system.log in
>Console still says its trying to 'Throttling respawn' it.
>
>I can find no reference to Mozy anyplace on my system including
>/Library/Startupitems. The people at Mozy told me to "uninstall
>using their script" when I told them I did that, the silence was
>deafening.

in a terminal window, type:
        ps gax | grep -i mozy
that should tell you where it's being executed from, and then you
should be able to find it and kill it.
--
-- Marshall

On Nov 30, 2007, at 4:11 PM, keith.kaiser27 wrote:

> Mozy has been uninstalled. According to the system.log in Console my
> machine is still trying to use it.

Then it isn't really "uninstalled". is it? :-)

It's not truly "uninstalled" until the tool that keeps trying to
launch it is also removed.

You could try something like `grep -ril mozy /Library /etc` from
Terminal to figure out what references Mozy, and go from there, but
that can get complex fast and I don't feel comfortable walking someone
through it via email.

Try an archive & install of OSX from the DVD; that should nullify
Mozy, and is much simpler.

Or bring it to a store and they'll either find out why it keeps
launching, or do the archive & install for you.


--
Chris Devers

--On November 30, 2007 1:11:18 PM -0800 "keith.kaiser27"
<keith.kaisergmail.com> wrote:

> I can find no reference to Mozy anyplace on my system including
> /Library/Startupitems. The people at Mozy told me to "uninstall using
> their script" when I told them I did that, the silence was deafening.

open terminal (using an administrator account) and type:
sudo find / -iname "*mozy*"

enter your password when prompted. It'll then list every file on your
system that has mozy in the name. When it finds something try renaming the
file.

If the messages are something like the following (substitute the mozy identifier in place of omnifocus):

=====================================

12/11/07 1:13:28 PM com.apple.launchd[126] (com.omnigroup.omnifocus.web_interface[9205]) Exited with exit code: 1 12/11/07 1:13:28 PM com.apple.launchd[126] (com.omnigroup.omnifocus.web_interface) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds 12/11/07 1:13:38 PM com.apple.launchd[126] (com.omnigroup.omnifocus.web_interface[9207]) Bug: launchd_core_logic.c:2938 (23433):2: chdir(j->workingdir) != -1 12/11/07 1:13:38 PM com.apple.launchd[126] (com.omnigroup.omnifocus.web_interface[9207]) open("log/production-stdout", ...): No such file or directory

=====================================

then you should be able to use launchctl to remove the offending bits. Launchd is apparently following instructions it was given to run some piece of Mozy backup. You need to remove the offending entry in the launchd database -- something that Mozy's uninstall script should've done for you.

% launchctl list |grep omni

- 1 com.omnigroup.omnifocus.web_interface

% launchctl stop com.omnigroup.omnifocus.web_interface

% launchctl remove com.omnigroup.omnifocus.web_interface

See now if the messages to your Console have stopped. Then tell the Mozy folks they need to fix their uninstaller for Leopard. Uninstallers are often neglected in QA testing.

Hope that helps.

Cheers, Matthew