August 2008 - launchd-dev - lists.macosforge.org

LaunchAgent Logging path.
by Tim Schooley 19 Aug '08

19 Aug '08

Hi all! I can't seem to get my LaunchAgent to log to a user-specific location. For example, the following doesn't work (no log file is created): <key>StandardOutPath</key> <string>~/mylog.log</string> Is there any way for each instance of the LaunchAgent to have its own log file? Thanks for any help! Kind regards, Tim

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WatchPaths Indicator of triggering path?
by Benjamin Burke 18 Aug '08

18 Aug '08

Hi, When an agent is run as the result of a watched path being modified, does launchd provide the agent with the path that triggered it? For example, imagine that I have the following plist which identifies 3 watchpaths: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd "> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>Label</key> <string>com.example.test</string> <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>/Users/tester/patchWatcher.pl</string> </array> <key>WatchPaths</key> <array> <string>/some/path</string> <string>/return/of/the/path</string> <string>/revenge/of/path</string> </array> </dict> </plist> Is there some way that launchd tells my program which of the 3 watch paths triggered the event? Is there some hidden "%s" program argument or something like that. I checked the environment variables and didn't see anything. I checked the man pages and couldn't find anything. Second, hopefully easier question: Do the terms "launch services" and "launchd" refer to the same thing? Thanks, Ben Burke

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Re: [launchd-dev] Accessing keychain in a launchd process
by Brad Reynolds 17 Aug '08

17 Aug '08

Thanks for the reply Quinn. I haven't seen that tech note. I've got some reading to do. But to clarify, I don't necessarily want it to run in a GUI context. I'm just wanting to authorize this script, when run via launchd, to access the keychain. A symptom of the my current problem is that it can't display the GUI. This occurs because the script doesn't have access to the keychain. I'd like to give it access beforehand so that it is authorized and the GUI is avoided altogether. When I run the script from the command line it doesn't prompt for the password since I've given it access. But when run from launchd it tries to prompt, thus the problem. I'll give the document a read and if I can't figure it out I'll reply again. Thanks. -bradr On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 3:28 AM, Quinn <eskimo1(a)apple.com> wrote: > At 20:55 -0700 10/8/08, Brad Reynolds wrote: >>Any ideas on what the program might be when run from launchctl? > > What context is your "launchd process" running in? Is it a daemon or > an agent? If it's an agent, what type of agent (see Table 1 in > TN2083 for the list of options)? > > <http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2005/tn2083.html> > > I would only expect this to work from a GUI launchd agent. Daemons > and other agents run outside of the GUI login context, and thus can't > safely display UI. > > S+E > -- > Quinn "The Eskimo!" <http://www.apple.com/developer/> > Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware > _______________________________________________ > launchd-dev mailing list > launchd-dev(a)lists.macosforge.org > http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/launchd-dev >

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Accessing keychain in a launchd process
by Brad Reynolds 11 Aug '08

11 Aug '08

I have a ruby script that shells out a call similar to the following: `security find-generic-password -ga test /Users/brad/Library/Keychains/login.keychain` When run from the command line I was prompted to give access to the keychain item for the 'security' command (this security of this concerns me but is out of scope for the question). After granting access via Keychain Access I can run the script and it no longer prompts for the retrieval of the password. When invoked from launchctl I see the following in Console: "security: SecKeychainFindGenericPassword: User interaction is not allowed." I tried adding launchd and launchctl to the list of programs that have access to this password but I get the same error. Any ideas on what the program might be when run from launchctl? -bradr

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Re: [launchd-dev] Attempting to develop a launch plist for
by Morgan Aldridge 07 Aug '08

07 Aug '08

On Tue, 5 Aug 2008 09:46:55 +0100, Quinn wrote: > > As long as you still need to support 10.4.x you'd be better off just > using "OnDemand". It's supported, albeit deprecated, on 10.5. Well, the StartupItem still works under Tiger, so I'll just drop support for that in the launchd plist. The "KeepAlive" functionality is much more worthwhile to me than getting rid of the StartupItem under Tiger. Incidentally--and a bit off-topic--is there an easy way to get the Mac OS X/Darwin version number from a bash script so I can install either the StartupItem of launchd plist? I think I saw one once, but the only thing that immediately comes to mind is to parse the output of `hostinfo` and I don't like that idea. I can ask on darwin-dev if that's more appropriate. > My guess is that this is related to networking. Startup items, since > 10.4, have automatically been given a dependency on networking for > compatibility reasons. If you convert to launchd, you lose that > dependency and it's likely you come up /way/ before the networking > stack. Lots of traditional UNIX code doesn't handle that well. I'll try to look at the sysmond source and see what checks the original author was doing in terms of the networking side of things. You're probably right that it's likely very little and/or doesn't handle it gracefully. > Just for the sake of debugging this, have you tried adding > "NetworkState" to your property list (in the "KeepAlive" dictionary, > as documented by <x-man-page://5/launchd.plist>). This will prevent > you from coming up until the network is up. It's not the long-term > solution to this problem, but it would allow you determine whether > the problem is networking or something else. I had looked at that key, but hadn't tried it yet. I'll give it a shot and see what results I get. I'm assuming--please correct me if I'm wrong--that that will kill the sysmond process if the network goes down? If so, it's definitely not a long term solution as sysmon is a network monitoring utility. ;) Morgan Aldridge --- morgant(a)makkintosshu.com http://www.makkintosshu.com/

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GUI Agent issue under Tiger
by Peter Alshuth 06 Aug '08

06 Aug '08

Hi all, I have a setup with (user) agents that are communicating with one daemon. Everything works well under 10.5 but if I run it under Tiger I got all the problems: I have a warning/password box in my agent (running as a background program with a "limited UI" for each user). I can click at a button but I cannot type anything in the password field under Tiger (works fine in Leopard). I read something about a login/logout hook for 10.3 or 10.4 but I thought this is not needed if I support only 10.4 and up. Apparently, my agents are not running under a GUI per-session bootstrap in 10.4 any more. How can I resolve this problem? I really don't want to use a different solution for 10.4 and creating another background task that will launch my UI agent (and the question here is how to deal with the bootstrap context). Is there any special flag in the plist file (like the aqua session keyword for 10.5) that I have to use for 10.4 only? The TN2083 points our that the global window server can be reached if the agent UID matches the console user, but if I stop and start the agent (with launchctl un/load myplistfile) all other launches will not allow the app from connecting to the window server any more. Again, all the problems I have are under Tiger 10.4.11 and not Leopard. Thanks for any help, Peter

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Attempting to develop a launch plist for sysmon
by Morgan Aldridge 05 Aug '08

05 Aug '08

A few years ago I wrote a Mac OS X StartupItem for sysmon <http://www.sysmon.org/> and I've been attempting to write a launchd plist for it now that I've migrated my monitoring server to Leopard Server (currently 10.5.3). Here's my /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.makkintosshu.sysmon.plist (owned by root:wheel with permissions of 750): <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>Label</key> <string>com.makkintosshu.sysmon</string> <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>/usr/local/bin/sysmond</string> <string>-d</string> </array> <key>OnDemand</key> <false/> <key>KeepAlive</key> <true/> <key>RunAtLoad</key> <true/> </dict> </plist> I use both the OnDemand and KeepAlive keys in the hopes of supporting both Tiger & Leopard with this file. Will I run into any issues there (I've currently only tested with Leopard Server)? Also, it seems to work correctly (sysmond loads, loads it's config file, and binds to its TCP port fine; plus if you kill the process launchd starts it up again) if I run `sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.makkintosshu.sysmon.plist` after boot, but if I leave it loaded (or, at least, if I don't disable it using `sudo launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.makkintosshu.sysmon.plist`) at boot, sysmond acts as if it didn't have any config files to load and it usually takes an unload & load of the launchd plist to get it to function normally. Any ideas as to what might cause this? Will I have to start investigating sysmond's source to see if it's a dependency checking issue? Shouldn't the file system be available upon loading the job and only network services might be unavailable? Thanks in advance, Morgan Aldridge --- morgant(a)makkintosshu.com http://www.makkintosshu.com/

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