macOS Performance – Understanding the ‘lsd’ Process and Its High CPU Usage

macmacos

I looked in iStat Menus and noticed that a process named lsd was consuming 99% of my CPU (Out of 400% for 4 cores). I searched around for a bit, but couldn't find out what this was, and why it's using so much processing power. It's not Little Snitch Daemon, as I never installed that. Someone else said that it could be Launch Services Daemon, but I thought that process was launchd. It's Launch Services Daemon.

Upon looking in the console, I notice these messages when searching for lsd:

22/12/2015 9:36:02.000 a.m. kernel[0]: Sandbox: AssetCacheLocato(400) deny(1) mach-lookup com.apple.lsd.mapdb
22/12/2015 9:36:02.931 a.m. AssetCacheLocatorService[400]: LaunchServices: disconnect event received for service com.apple.lsd.mapdb
22/12/2015 9:36:02.000 a.m. kernel[0]: Sandbox: AssetCacheLocato(400) deny(1) mach-lookup com.apple.lsd.mapdb
22/12/2015 9:36:02.932 a.m. AssetCacheLocatorService[400]: LaunchServices: disconnect event received for service com.apple.lsd.mapdb
22/12/2015 9:36:03.000 a.m. kernel[0]: Sandbox: AssetCacheLocato(400) deny(1) mach-lookup com.apple.lsd.modifydb
22/12/2015 9:36:03.657 a.m. AssetCacheLocatorService[400]: LaunchServices: disconnect event received for service com.apple.lsd.modifydb
22/12/2015 9:39:41.000 a.m. kernel[0]: Sandbox: SpotlightNetHelp(376) deny(1) mach-lookup com.apple.lsd.mapdb
22/12/2015 9:39:41.995 a.m. SpotlightNetHelper[376]: LaunchServices: disconnect event received for service com.apple.lsd.mapdb
22/12/2015 9:39:41.000 a.m. kernel[0]: Sandbox: SpotlightNetHelp(376) deny(1) mach-lookup com.apple.lsd.mapdb
22/12/2015 9:39:41.996 a.m. SpotlightNetHelper[376]: LaunchServices: disconnect event received for service com.apple.lsd.mapdb
22/12/2015 9:39:42.000 a.m. kernel[0]: Sandbox: SpotlightNetHelp(376) deny(1) mach-lookup com.apple.lsd.modifydb
22/12/2015 9:39:42.370 a.m. SpotlightNetHelper[376]: LaunchServices: disconnect event received for service com.apple.lsd.modifydb
22/12/2015 9:39:58.100 a.m. lsd[296]: LaunchServices: Could not store lsd-identifiers file at /private/var/db/lsd/com.apple.lsdschemes.plist
22/12/2015 10:01:15.000 a.m. kernel[0]: process lsd[237] thread 19967 caught burning CPU!; EXC_RESOURCE supressed due to audio playback
22/12/2015 3:34:04.828 p.m. lsd[296]: LaunchServices: Could not store lsd-identifiers file at /private/var/db/lsd/com.apple.lsdschemes.plist
22/12/2015 3:44:07.469 p.m. sudo[45308]:     MyUsername : TTY=ttys000 ; PWD=/private/var/db ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/bin/mkdir lsd
22/12/2015 3:49:09.183 p.m. lsd[306]: LaunchServices: Scheme mapping file does not exist, creating file.
22/12/2015 3:49:09.400 p.m. lsd[306]: LaunchServices: Could not store lsd-identifiers file at /private/var/db/lsd/com.apple.lsdschemes.plist
22/12/2015 3:49:09.407 p.m. lsd[306]: LaunchServices: Could not store lsd-identifiers file at /private/var/db/lsd/com.apple.lsdschemes.plist
22/12/2015 3:49:39.366 p.m. lsd[306]: LaunchServices: Currently 0 installed placeholders: ()
22/12/2015 3:49:50.000 p.m. kernel[0]: Sandbox: AssetCacheLocato(535) deny(1) mach-lookup com.apple.lsd.mapdb
22/12/2015 3:49:50.802 p.m. AssetCacheLocatorService[535]: LaunchServices: disconnect event received for service com.apple.lsd.mapdb
22/12/2015 3:49:51.000 p.m. kernel[0]: Sandbox: AssetCacheLocato(535) deny(1) mach-lookup com.apple.lsd.modifydb
22/12/2015 3:49:51.002 p.m. AssetCacheLocatorService[535]: LaunchServices: disconnect event received for service com.apple.lsd.modifydb
22/12/2015 4:31:57.573 p.m. lsd[306]: LaunchServices: Could not store lsd-identifiers file at /private/var/db/lsd/com.apple.lsdschemes.plist
22/12/2015 4:34:34.075 p.m. lsd[306]: LaunchServices: Could not store lsd-identifiers file at /private/var/db/lsd/com.apple.lsdschemes.plist
22/12/2015 4:34:34.290 p.m. lsd[306]: LaunchServices: Could not store lsd-identifiers file at /private/var/db/lsd/com.apple.lsdschemes.plist
22/12/2015 4:37:20.000 p.m. kernel[0]: process lsd[220] thread 26462 caught burning CPU!; EXC_RESOURCE supressed due to audio playback

As for this message:

22/12/2015 3:44:07.469 p.m. sudo[45308]:     MyUsername : TTY=ttys000 ; PWD=/private/var/db ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/bin/mkdir lsd

I did try making a dir called /private/var/db/lsd as root.

Also, my CPU usage seems to be very intermittent (which it never did before).

Intermittent CPU Usage

Looking into /usr/libexec, I found lsd and noticed that it has been created on 17 Sep 2015. Why is it so new (along with everything else in that directory)?

Best Answer

lsd in OS X is indeed the LaunchServiceDaemon. launchd is a launch daemon manager! It provides probably the same function as in iOS. According to Apple it provides

support for launching apps and matching document types to apps. As a result, the keys recognized by Launch Services allow you to specify the desired execution environment for your bundled code.

lsd was apparently introduced in OS X 10.11 El Capitan because I can't find it in older systems. The latest version (included in 10.11.2) should have the mod date Dec 3, 2015.

To troubleshoot

  • the "LaunchServices: Could not store lsd-identifiers file at /private/var/db/lsd/com.apple.lsdschemes.plist" problem check this post:

    Probably not the best way, but I seem to have fixed/suppressed that error message. This is what I did:

    cd /private/var/db

    lsd directory did not exist

    mkdir lsd

    Still no joy

    chmod -R 777 /private/var/db/lsd
    (i know, i just opened up my gibson to being hacked)
    touch /private/var/db/lsd/com.apple.lsdschemes.plist

    Seemed to go away after that. Willing to bet a disk repair/permissions check will break it again, but have not tried. If I cat that file the following is the content:

    bplist00?

  • the 100 % CPU-usage: /usr/libexec/lsd using 100% of CPU

Related Question