Apple - quicklookd and revisiond eating my CPU
This is how I fixed this problem. It might help you but from what I've seen so far, even thought there are similar issues, the source of problems are different.
I've ran sudo iosnoop -n quicklookd
- it shown something like this:
UID PID D BLOCK SIZE COMM PATHNAME
501 5656 W 56385320 32768 quicklookd ??/Quick Look/cloudthumbnails.db-journal
501 5656 W 56385320 4096 quicklookd ??/Quick Look/cloudthumbnails.db-journal
501 5656 W 48100696 12288 quicklookd ??/Quick Look/cloudthumbnails.db
501 5656 W 48100816 8192 quicklookd ??/Quick Look/cloudthumbnails.db
501 5656 W 48100840 8192 quicklookd ??/Quick Look/cloudthumbnails.db
501 5656 W 56385640 28672 quicklookd ??/T/etilqs_kYNR5XinU71bydh
501 5656 W 56386736 32768 quicklookd ??/Quick Look/cloudthumbnails.db-journal
501 5656 W 56386736 4096 quicklookd ??/Quick Look/cloudthumbnails.db-journal
501 5656 W 48100696 12288 quicklookd ??/Quick Look/cloudthumbnails.db
501 5656 W 48100816 8192 quicklookd ??/Quick Look/cloudthumbnails.db
501 5656 W 48100840 8192 quicklookd ??/Quick Look/cloudthumbnails.db
501 5656 W 56387280 28672 quicklookd ??/T/etilqs_ejadCww3DunYuu3
501 5656 W 56474504 32768 quicklookd ??/Quick Look/cloudthumbnails.db-journal
501 5656 W 56474504 4096 quicklookd ??/Quick Look/cloudthumbnails.db-journal
501 5656 W 48100696 12288 quicklookd ??/Quick Look/cloudthumbnails.db
501 5656 W 48100816 8192 quicklookd ??/Quick Look/cloudthumbnails.db
501 5656 W 48100840 8192 quicklookd ??/Quick Look/cloudthumbnails.db
501 5656 W 56474568 28672 quicklookd ??/T/etilqs_QzHS30kC4YT8ETi
I gave it a shot and looked for cloudthumbnails.db
file. Bingo! Found it in /Users/me/Library/Application Support/Quick Look
and the quicklookd
was writing to cloudthumbnails.db-journal
like crazy. But it was writing small chunks, then deleting the file and writing those small chunks again. Unfortunately this is a binary file, so it's not easy to read, but I gave it a shot and just did tail cloudthumbnails.db-journal
. I got mostly gibberish, but I noticed repeated path /Users/me/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/
and some files there.
This is iCloud folder and for some reason quicklookd was unable to process those files. I deleted them (moved to trash and emptied) and TADA! It solved the problem.
I have no idea why this happened, why quicklookd
was unable to process those files. I've sent those files again to iCloud and everything was fine - no crazy behavior of quicklookd
.
I would try using opensnoop
to see what files quicklookd is looking at. There might be a particular files that it is either having trouble reading or writing to.
While they are using excessive CPU, open a Terminal window and type the following command. You'll be prompted for your password.
sudo opensnoop -n quicklookd
This should show you all the files that quicklookd is reading or writing to, and might help you identify if one particular file or folder of files is causing the issue.
Try the same thing for revisiond.
I couldn't figure out how to log in to Terminal, so I just killed quicklookd, which was hogging so much memory that nothing else would run. Instant relief! I suppose it will start up again once I reboot, though.