March 2009 - launchd-dev - lists.macosforge.org

SampleD failure with dynamic SockServiceName
by David Anderson 13 Aug '09

13 Aug '09

My intention is have launchd start a daemon on a dynamic port, publish the port number via bonjour, and then connect to this port after determining the port number using CFNetService (Bonjour). Starting from SampleD (and using the included client.pl), I can advertise the service on a hard-coded port via bonjour, lookup the port number using Bonjour Browser, modify client.pl to use this port, and connect using client.pl. The SampleD binary starts correctly in an OnDemand fashion correctly. If I change <key>SockServiceName</key> <string>12345</string> to <key>SockServiceName</key> <string>0</string> then lookup the dynamic port number using Bonjour Browser and configure client.pl to use this port, client.pl will NOT connect to this port and outputs this error: connect: Connection refused at ./client.pl line 77. With a dynamic port, I am unable to connect to this port using a modified client.pl. I can find no evidence that the SampleD binary is starting in an OnDemand fashion. Adding <key>OnDemand</key> <false/> has no effect. Is there anything different about the default configuration of a dynamic port vs a hard-coded port that would impeded the ability to connect to the dynamically assigned port? Thanks, Dave

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Re: [launchd-dev] USB on demand
by Chris Cleeland 30 Mar '09

30 Mar '09

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 10:30 AM, Quinn <eskimo1(a)apple.com> wrote: > At 02:14 -0400 30/3/09, Chris Hiszpanski wrote: > >> What is the status of <rdar://problem/4551362> [...] >> > > There's been no progress on this, alas. Is there anything anyone outside of Apple can do to push this issue along?

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USB on demand
by Chris Hiszpanski 30 Mar '09

30 Mar '09

Hi all, What is the status of <rdar://problem/4551362>, the request to support the launching of a specified program upon detection of a USB device with a specific vendor and product ID (or even any USB device, leaving it to the launched program to determine whether the vendor and product IDs match)? Chris

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KeepAlive / NetworkState
by Keith Mountin 30 Mar '09

30 Mar '09

I am working on a launchd script to keep VNC alive. We are having difficulty using the KeepAlive key with NetworkState. According to the man pages: KeepAlive <boolean or dictionary of stuff> This optional key is used to control whether your job is to be kept continuously running or to let demand and conditions control the invocation. The default is false and therefore only demand will start the job. The value may be set to true to unconditionally keep the job alive. Alternatively, a dictionary of conditions may be specified to selectively control whether launchd keeps a job alive or not. If multiple keys are provided, launchd ORs them, thus providing maximum flexibil- ity to the job to refine the logic and stall if necessary. If launchd finds no reason to restart the job, it falls back on demand based invocation. Jobs that exit quickly and frequently when configured to be kept alive will be throttled to con- verve system resources. SuccessfulExit <boolean> If true, the job will be restarted as long as the program exits and with an exit status of zero. If false, the job will be restarted in the inverse condition. This key implies that "RunAtLoad" is set to true, since the job needs to run at least once before we can get an exit status. NetworkState <boolean> If true, the job will be kept alive as long as the network is up, where up is defined as at least one non-loopback interface being up and having IPv4 or IPv6 addresses assigned to them. If false, the job will be kept alive in the inverse condition. But if I use <key>KeepAlive</key> <dict> <key>NetworkState</key> <true/> </dict> I get "Unknown key for boolean: NetworkState" Does launchd actually support <key>KeepAlive</key> <dict> <key>NetworkState</key> <true/> </dict> Thank you, Keith

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_vprocmgr_move_subset_to_user()
by Stuart Crook 17 Mar '09

17 Mar '09

Hi. Could someone help me understand _vprocmgr_move_subset_to_user() and the environmental conditions which cause a call to it to fail. To explain the context: I'm working with the PureDarwin (www.puredarwin.org ) team, and we've almost got an mutil-user environment up and running. The system is running in standard (ie. not single-user) mode, with the user as root (uid=0, gid=0). A number of daemons including launchd, securityd and DirectoryService are active. "login" will run but fails with the message "Cannot make/remove an entry for the specified session". I've traced the failure down to the pam_launchd module (part of the pam_modules project in Darwin), and specifically to a call to _vprocmgr_move_subset_to_user() (no other failure in this module will produce the exact error code I'm seeing). The following error messages are printed to the system error log: Mar 17 16:50:57 VMDarwin com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.launchd.peruser.1000[95]): Root Mach bootstrap cannot be transferred. Mar 17 16:50:57 VMDarwin login[94]: USER_PROCESS: 94 ttys000 Mar 17 16:50:57 VMDarwin com.apple.launchd[95] (0x1010b0.login[94]): Bug: launchd_core_logic.c:6292 (23646):1100: kr == 0 _vprocmgr_move_subset_to_user() is being called with arguments uid=1000 and session_type="StandardIO" (the default, I believe). I've tried following the source (from 258.19) but become lost when I can't find vproc_mig_swap_integer(). So, bearing in mind that this is a version of Darwin assembled from pieces rather than OS X, can anyone suggest why creating a user session like this may fail? What steps do we need to take to assemble an environment which will allow user session creations? Any and all help will be appreciated. (And if you'd like to assemble your own test environment, grab the VMWare image from http://sites.google.com/a/puredarwin.org/puredarwin/downloads/xmas and then follow the instructions here: http://sites.google.com/a/puredarwin.org/puredarwin/developers/network ). Thanks Stuart Crook

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launchd - is my job already loaded?
by Jim Correia 05 Mar '09

05 Mar '09

I have a need for a periodic (in this case, twice per day) per user task. I have written a job file and all works great from the command line using launchctl, but I want to set up this task programatically. Is there an API for launchd/launchctl, or should I just fork+exec launchctl to setup my job? Is there a prettier way to determine if my job is already loaded than to exec `launchctl list` and grep the output? Jim

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10.4 & 10.5 LaunchAgent compatibility
by Steffan A. Cline 05 Mar '09

05 Mar '09

I've been working on a solution to some issues with getting OpenOffice.org.app to work in a headless state but there is some issue with the build that prevents this. So, as a work around I am trying to come up with a LaunchAgent that will load OpenOffice.org on boot and run consistently. It seems I have no choice to use LoginWindow and Aqua to keep it up regardless of whether or not a user is logged in. On 10.4.11 no matter what I do, it does not load at boot. I have to manually load it with launchctl load /Library/LaunchAgents/net.execuchoice.doc-converter.plist Obviously this is not practical. On 10.5.x it loads as expected on boot. My questions are: 1) Am I doing something wrong in the following file? 2) Is there something I can do to get this to work universally for both platforms? (10.4 & 10.5) 3) Is there a way to have this launch regardless of the LoginWindow or Aqua session type rather than have an instance close and relaunch? <?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>KeepAlive</key> <true/> <key>OnDemand</key> <false/> <key>RunAtLoad</key> <true/> <key>Label</key> <string>net.execuchoice.doc-converter</string> <key>LimitLoadToSessionType</key> <array> <string>LoginWindow</string> <string>Aqua</string> </array> <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>/Applications/OpenOffice.org.app/Contents/MacOS/soffice.bin</string> <string>-headless</string> <string>-nologo</string> <string>-nofirststartwizard</string> <string>-invisible</string> <string>-accept="socket,host=127.0.0.1,port=8100;urp;"</string> </array> <key>StandardErrorPath</key> <string>/Library/Logs/OpenOfficeDaemon.log</string> <key>StandardOutPath</key> <string>/Library/Logs/OpenOfficeDaemon.log</string> </dict> </plist> Thanks Steffan --------------------------------------------------------------- T E L 6 0 2 . 7 9 3 . 0 0 1 4 | F A X 6 0 2 . 9 7 1 . 1 6 9 4 Steffan A. Cline Steffan(a)ExecuChoice.net Phoenix, Az http://www.ExecuChoice.net USA AIM : SteffanC ICQ : 57234309 YAHOO : Steffan_Cline MSN : steffan(a)hldns.com GOOGLE: Steffan.Cline Lasso Partner Alliance Member ---------------------------------------------------------------

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What is kicker.xml for Leopard then?
by Robert Nicholson 05 Mar '09

05 Mar '09

So if/when you want to run a script when network state changes what do you do? Other than use NetworkLocation which is a commercial (albeit reasonably priced) piece of software.

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