Mac Snow Leopard random freezing and Spotlight
Since upgrading to Snow Leopard (10.6.6) from Leopard (10.5.8) last week I have been experiencing random system freezes which have left me waiting for 30 second bursts every 20 minutes or so.
This has finally become too annoying so I took some time out from work to find out what was causing it and, more importantly, sort it out.
Basically it turns out that Spotlight has been causing this problem (or so it appears).
Thanks to a user on the apple forum from a couple of years ago, I have been able to resolve the issue.
The user (svener888) suggested that it was being caused by Spotlight. Here is what they suggested:
1. Disable Spotlight “sudo mdutil -a -i off”
2. Change the preferences of Spotlight to only index (Applications, Folders and Documents)
3. Enable Spotlight again “sudo mdutil -a -i on”
That was amazingly simple and, so far, touch wood, etc. it appears to have worked. My system hasn’t frozen again and all is well.
On top of that, I also have regained a further 10GB+ of space!!!!!! (on top of the 60GB that I regained on upgrading to Snow Leopard itself) It is amazing how much Spotlight uses! I am actually considering turning it off all together as to be honest I never use it.
Do Panic
As I mentioned in my Switching to Mac post a few days ago, I recently made the jump from PC to Mac, something I should have done years ago.
One of the reasons (other than budget) that I hadn’t done this sooner was my worry about having to learn a new work-flow. I have been programming for nearly 10 years now and, as you know, hard habits are hard to break. Clearly changing operating system would mean that I would have to re-learn how to do a lot of things.
One of my main worries was what I was going to edit with. I have been using Homesite for the best part of the las 8 years (having broken away from dreamweaver as soon as I “saw the light”) and over that time I have become used to the way it works. Continue reading »
“A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away…” switching to Mac
Well, maybe not so long ago and well, to be honest not really that far way, but, back in the UK when I started at Cumbria College of Art and Design (now part of the University of Cumbria) in 1989 my first dabblings with computers was with a Macintosh.
I remember that the college had 4 of them to share between c.400 students. An unthinkable ratio nowadays no doubt. But back then few people used them (or even knew what they were for I suspect) and I had one of them pretty much all to myself. As I was studying graphic design at the time, I spent endless hours learning and working with probably some of the earliest versions of Adobe Pagemaker, Freehand and Photoshop. All in black & white of course and probably on some ridiculously small screen by modern terms.
Unbelievably I still have some of the work that I did on those macs all those years ago 🙂