OS X 10.5, SyncServer takes 100% of CPU


For the past couple of days a process called SyncServer started every 15 minutes or so and it would take over a 100% of the CPU on my MacBook Pro. Not quite sure what initiated this problem, but I found the remedy discussed in this Apple support case to be useful and apparently effective (well at least so far). I did have .Mac and BlackJack synchronization, so not sure if either of these applications caused this problem or not.

Here is the command that you’ll need to run (broken into a set of cd commands to fit the width of this column).
$ cd /System/Library/Frameworks/
$ cd SyncServices.framework/Versions/
$ cd A/Resources/
$ ./resetsync.pl full

15 Responses to “OS X 10.5, SyncServer takes 100% of CPU”

  1. Elfinn Færevåg Says:

    Thank you, that saved my day!

  2. peters Says:

    Thank you – this was a big help!
    I had a similar problem with an old phone that the isync was trying to sync although it was not connected…

  3. Martin Leblanc Says:

    Very helpful – thank you!

  4. Paul Singh Says:

    Thank you — I started noticing the same problem today and this fixed it in no time.

  5. John S. Wilkins Says:

    I’ve had this for several weeks now. I just did a top and found out why, and a Google found your solution. I hope it works, and thank.

  6. sata Says:

    Thanks! Seems like this work for me too ^^

  7. Andy T Says:

    This didn’t work for me, I got a time out message from python (even in safe mode). Single user mode didn’t help either. However, it did set me on the right path. Apple “STRONGLY DISCOURAGES” messing with the ~/Library/Application Support/SyncServices folder as it may lead to “unexpected data loss”. My machine was unusable, so I bit the bullet. I copied the SyncServices folder to the desktop and compressed it as a back-up. Then logged out and back in again. Then I went strait to the MobileMe Preferance Pane. In the sync tab, in advanced I “Reset Sync Data” on my machine. I was then presnted with a dialog box asking whether to replace all on MobileMe or replace all on my computer. As this is my msater machine I replaced all on MoblieMe and all is now hunky dory (thats a good thing by the way). Thanks alot

  8. Scott Says:

    I used Andy T’s procedure and it also resolved my issue (Thanks for posting Andy). I was initially confused about the location of the SyncServices folder, it’s in the user’s library directory, not the system’s library folder. This issue was user-specific for me (you can test this by creating a separate user account and then logging in to that one to see if the SyncServer goes crazy on that other account–which it didn’t in my case). I hope this helps.

  9. Paul Says:

    At first it didn’t work for me either at first. Ugly error messages appeared along the lines of “NS exception was thrown”. I then restarted, and before the syncserver could start its evil work, started Terminal and executed the command. The error message did not appear, and all is well. Thanks.

  10. Ditlesen Says:

    Andy T, you are the man…
    I have had problem, with my MobileMe, for soooo long time, but I think you just fixed it!!!

  11. leddunK » Meine Menüleiste Says:

    [...] MobileMe-Sync: Diese Systemfunktion erfüllt gleich zwei Aufgaben. Zum einen hält sie via MobileMe Adressbuch- und Terminkalender zwischen Computer und iPhone synchron, zum anderen sorgt sie dafür, dass der Prozessorlüfter nicht einrostet (im Viertelstundentakt von 1800 auf 6200 Umdrehungen behoben). [...]

  12. Oliver Völckers Says:

    Thanks alot, this fixed my problem with Apple’s sync. The first time I tried it I got the following response in the Terminal:

    2009-06-17 07:57:21.895 perl[365:807] SyncServer is unavailable: exception when connecting: connection timeout: did not receive reply
    PerlObjCBridge: NSException raised while sending reallyResetSyncData to NSObject object
    name: “ISyncServerUnavailableException”
    reason: “Can’t connect to the sync server: NSPortTimeoutException: connection timeout: did not receive reply ((null))”

    After a few minutes, I tried again and everything worked as it should. I had to restore my data from MobileMe, of course, but I also had backups on other computers and with TimeMachine, so I felt safe.

    P.S. My system is Mac OS X 10.5.7

  13. tyagain Says:

    thank you – also saved me a lot of trouble!

  14. Julio Alonso Says:

    I’ve had this problem for weeks now. All I was doing was killing the syncserver on activity task every time it started running. My machine was becoming almos unusable.

    Thank you so much.

  15. JackC NYC Says:

    What worked for me was launching iSync
    Preferences
    uncheck Enable Syncing (removed from Activity Monitor)
    check Enable Syncing

    now SyncServer is not taking 90% CPU

    good luck

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