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Every now and then, since I installed Lion on my Mac, I have noticed that a process called uninstalld has been running and using a lot of CPU time.

Does anyone know what it does? I haven't tried to uninstall anything.

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uninstalld appears to belong to a new "Uninstall" framework that comes with OS X Lion.

It sits in: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Uninstall.framework/Resources/uninstalld

What does it do? I don't know specifically, but here's what AppleInsider says (based on a blog entry here):

Additionally, the discovery of a new Uninstall.framework indicates that new Profile Server remote management tools (a feature of Lion Server for both Mac and iOS clients) will enable network administrators to remotely manage the software installed and removed on an organizations' machines, in addition to managing profiles (configuration files that are currently used to set up new iOS devices, and will in the future be used to set up Lion Macs).

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In addition: Do you have OS X Lion Server installed? And does it hurt your performance? – slhck♦ Aug 6 '11 at 9:58
It is worth clarifying that, in most cases, so long as applications aren't competing for CPU time, it doesn't matter if one background process is using a lot. It's quite possible that it's running as a low priority process, in which case if you are running other things it should get out of your way, and not hurt perf at all. With all that said, I do have to note that my install of OS X Lion (not the Server version) is not running uninstalld. I'm not quite sure why that is, but it's a bit weird. – Lukasa Aug 6 '11 at 10:47
@slhck I don't have OS X Lion Server installed. – Stephen Winnall Aug 21 '11 at 14:05
@Lukasa I suspect it's low priority. It also seems to come and go. It's not running at the moment, but I saw it again a couple of days ago. – Stephen Winnall Aug 21 '11 at 14:10
@Stephen I think you shouldn't worry about it. – slhck♦ Aug 21 '11 at 14:11
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