July 2010 - launchd-dev - lists.macosforge.org

Questions on mixed triggers and calendar triggers
by Iceberg-Dev 23 Jul '10

23 Jul '10

I've read some WWDC sessions slides, the launchd.plist man page and I've already made some launchd plists but I'm wondering about the following points: - is it possible to define different types of trigger for a launchd daemon or agents? For instance, is it possible to launch a daemon both on schedule with StartCalendarInterval and a mach message? The idea being the process would be run at a specific time of the day but could also be launched "manually". - is there a way to change the StartCalendarInterval values of a daemon launchd plist (while the launchd daemon is running) with some kind of launchd APIs instead of Foundation/CoreFoundation APIs? If you change these values, do you need to unload and then reload the plist (I would tend to believe so which would be an issue)? - is it possible tell launchd to re-launch a schedule daemon if the daemon crashes and not only when the next trigger date is reached?

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Re: [launchd-dev] Questions on mixed triggers and calendar triggers
by Damien Sorresso 23 Jul '10

23 Jul '10

On Jul 23, 2010, at 9:21 AM, Michael_google gmail_Gersten wrote: >>> For instance, is it possible to launch a daemon both on schedule with StartCalendarInterval and a mach message? The idea being the process would be run at a specific time of the day but could also be launched "manually". >> >> Yes. Though why would you want your daemon to run on a timer interval if you can just launch it on-demand whenever you need to? > > Maybe you want it to run once an hour anyways. Why? I'm of the opinion that in most cases, when people use a timer, they're using it as a substitute for tracking some state which they cannot track. > Maybe you also want it to run when a disk is attached. > > Maybe you even want it to run when you wake from sleep. Neither of those is possible currently. So yeah, I guess you could run it every hour to make up for it... but why every hour? > ** Is there any way for a user program to run on disk attach and/or > wake from sleep, or is that feature for Time Machine hardcoded? The > only way I can get my scripts to run at wakeup or attach is by > hijacking Time Machine's. (run my script instead of backup-helper; my > script calls backup-helper) TimeMachine uses SPI. -- Damien Sorresso BSD Engineering Apple Inc.

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Re: [launchd-dev] Questions on mixed triggers and calendar triggers
by Damien Sorresso 23 Jul '10

23 Jul '10

On Jul 23, 2010, at 1:54 PM, Michael_google gmail_Gersten wrote: >>> ** Is there any way for a user program to run on disk attach and/or >>> wake from sleep, or is that feature for Time Machine hardcoded? The >>> only way I can get my scripts to run at wakeup or attach is by >>> hijacking Time Machine's. (run my script instead of backup-helper; my >>> script calls backup-helper) >> >> >> TimeMachine uses SPI. >> -- >> Damien Sorresso >> BSD Engineering >> Apple Inc. > > SPI??? > > Serial peripheral interface? > Something about firewalls that block syn floods, killing your access > to google maps in snow leopard? > Stuff about fetching events for arbitrary windows, and watching the > references expire? > > Google has a lot of stuff on SPI, but nothing looks like a programming > interface. SPI => System Programming Interface -- Damien Sorresso BSD Engineering Apple Inc.

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New Ruby Library - Plist4r
by Dreamcat4 20 Jul '10

20 Jul '10

Hi, Introducing a new Ruby Library - "Plist4r" http://rubygems.org/gems/plist4r Some of you might be looking for easier ways to edit your launchd plist files. We have now moved to 1.0 stable release of Plist4r and am very happy to share it with the community. Plist4r is also slated to be incorporated into the Homebrew package management system. # To install the Ruby gem $ gem install plist4r More info - please see the online docs. Regards dreamcat4 dreamcat4(a)gmail.com

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Re: [launchd-dev] (RESOLVED) SMJobBless not copying entire __launchd_plist
by Richard Brown 12 Jul '10

12 Jul '10

On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 15:30, Damien Sorresso <dsorresso(a)apple.com> wrote: > On Jul 9, 2010, at 6:33 AM, Richard Brown wrote: >> The documentation for SMJobBless states that "[t]he helper tool must >> have an embedded launchd plist. The only required key in this plist is >> the Label key." This implies to us that other keys in the embedded >> launchd plist (except Program and ProgramArguments) will be respected. >> >> However, we find that the executable is copied into place, but only >> the Label of our embedded launchd plist (and the ProgramArguments >> generated by the API call) is written out to the >> /Library/LaunchDaemons/reverse-dns-label.helper.plist. > > We'll also remove the Program key. Otherwise, I'd have to see your plist to diagnose further. <snip> > It sounds like your plist is somehow getting truncated. Using otool and a hex2bin tool, we confirmed that the plist was indeed being truncated during the -sectcreate. It seems that our plist file had some manner of deficiency (unexpected line-break type, perhaps?). It is strange, though, that we could open and read the file (initially generated with a shell script) in the Property List Editor with no difficulty; yet saving it with no modifications from that utility fixed whatever problem caused the truncation. The API is working for us now. >> Can anyone help explain these issues? Should we try a workaround of >> SMJobCopyDictionary / mutate dictionary / SMJobSubmit to get our other >> keys/values into the launchd plist? > > > That won't help. Those APIs don't touch the plist on-disk. It's not clear to me what "SMJobSubmit submits the given job to the specified domain" means if it doesn't touch the plist on-disk; is it only for one-shot jobs? Richard Brown

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SMJobBless not copying entire __launchd_plist
by Richard Brown 09 Jul '10

09 Jul '10

The documentation for SMJobBless states that "[t]he helper tool must have an embedded launchd plist. The only required key in this plist is the Label key." This implies to us that other keys in the embedded launchd plist (except Program and ProgramArguments) will be respected. However, we find that the executable is copied into place, but only the Label of our embedded launchd plist (and the ProgramArguments generated by the API call) is written out to the /Library/LaunchDaemons/reverse-dns-label.helper.plist. We are further unable to get the SMJobBless API to upgrade the installed helper tool based on "Bundle version" version number in the __info_plist; we instead receive "(kSMErrorDomainFramework error -308 - Unknown error code: -308)" in the CFErrorRef. But if we manually remove the launchd job and delete the helper tool & plist files, SMJobBless succeeds, with the new launchd plist containing the same information as the previous, namely the Label and ProgramArguments, but nothing else from the embedded __launchd_plist section. Can anyone help explain these issues? Should we try a workaround of SMJobCopyDictionary / mutate dictionary / SMJobSubmit to get our other keys/values into the launchd plist? Thanks, RB

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Launch daemon not started after migration
by Sidney San Martín 08 Jul '10

08 Jul '10

My launch daemon is not loaded after Setup Assistant migrates it to a new machine. It's loaded just fine after a restart. This isn't strictly within the domain of launchd, but has anyone run into specific cases where Migration Assistant does/does not load migrated plists in /Library/LaunchDaemons/? If not, I'll work around it and file a bug.

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Disabling of launchd job if program is missing
by Vera Tkachenko 06 Jul '10

06 Jul '10

Hello, in my program I use quite a simple launchd jobs to perform some tasks. This job is configured to run some tool when certain conditions are met. All works fine except one case. When user deletes this tool (e.g. after incorrect uninstall of program), then launchd fails to find tool and therefore fails to run my job. The following error is logged: 25/04/2010 23:26:11 com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[224] (<job label>[89736]) posix_spawn(<path to tool>, ...): No such file or directory The problem is that after this launchd keep trying to run this job. Why it just don't disable this job? If this is desired behavior, is it possible to configure it somehow to disable job if it's tool is missing? This is not just my software problem. Lots of other programs have such issues. -- Thanks, Vera Tkachenko

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