mds/mdworker process takes CPU usage over 90%

What is MDS in Mac OS?


mds stands for “metadata server” and the mds process is part of Spotlight, the amazingly powerful and very useful search feature built directly into the foundation of Mac OS X.

Is the mds process related to mdworker?


Yes. Usually you will see the mds process in conjunction with mdworker, which is another part of Spotlight and it’s indexing engine.




How long does mds & Spotlight take to finish indexing?


How long it takes to update the Spotlight index depends on a few variables, but mostly the size of your hard drive, the amount of data being indexed, major changes to the filesystem, and the time since last indexing. Just let the indexing complete, it generally takes between 15 and 45 minutes to complete.


When you Mac OSX is indexing, the icon will be different ( the magnifying glass will have a dot in the center )

Click the Icon, you will see the progress of indexing 

You could stop mds service as:

shell>sudo mdutil -a -i off

Re-enabling Spotlight

shell>sudo mdutil -a -i on 

Now Spotlight indexing will be back on and work as usual. 

Remarks:
when you installed Mac OSX in vmware , I sugguested you did as follow:
(1) closed Spotlight , if you have no enough resource
(2) closed any Screen Saver (no Screen saver)
(3) closed Energy Saver,
     System Preference -> Energy Saver -> Computer Sleep ( Never)
                                                               -> Display Sleep (Never)
     (unchecked) put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible
     取消能源節約器相關設定（讓電腦進入睡眠，讓顯示器進入睡眠），並不讓硬碟進入休眠

reference:
http://osxdaily.com/2010/08/05/mds-mac/
http://mac.pcbeta.com/viewthread.php?tid=65117

(Pseudo-)Enable root in Mac OSX Snow Leopard

To enable root in terminal, Try "dsenableroot". You wil be prompted for your password and then what you want as root password and then a confirmation of the root password. "dsenablerood -d" disbles the root password


Here is part or the man page.


dsenableroot -- enables or disables the root account.


SYNOPSIS


dsenableroot [-d] [-u username] [-p password] [-r rootPassword]


DESCRIPTION
dsenableroot sets the password for the root account if enabling the root user account. Otherwise, if disable [-d] is chosen, the root account passwords are removed and the root user is disabled.


A list of flags and their descriptions:


-u username
Username of a user that has administrative privileges on this computer.


-p password
Password to use in conjunction with the specified username. If this is not specified, you will be prompted for
entry.


-r rootPassword
Password to be used for the root account. If this is not specified for enabling, you will be prompted for
entry.



There's no reason I'm aware of to enable the root user. If you need to do things as root, simply type sudo -s in the Terminal to start a shell with root access and proceed from there.


or

use sudo su - which makes sure that you keep the same shell settings as you had in you administrator settings



reference: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090909081659323