- launchd-dev - lists.macosforge.org

General questions on launchd
by Scott Haneda 01 Jun '09

01 Jun '09

Hello, first post, I have done my best to hit up nabble archives and see if there are any answers, so far, no luck. I am on 10.5. Where does one draw the line from stuffing a command into a plist versus having a simple command call a more complicated script, even if the script to be called is not that complicated? Example: <dict> <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>/bin/bash /Users/me/Library/Application\ Support/dir/script</ string> </array> </dict> </plist> * How important is it to use full paths to binaries like `echo` and `ls`, as long as I am sure that I have not mucked with the environment variables to them? Are environment variables cleared in launchd, or do user launchd plists need to have care taken to make sure an alias bash alias will get in the way? I have never been able to get that to work. syslog tells me Jun 1 11:02:47 host com.apple.launchd[155] (com.me.foo[19809]): posix_spawnp("/Users/me/Library/Application Support/dir/script", ...): No such file or directory Jun 1 11:02:47 host com.apple.launchd[155] (com.me.ALARM[19809]): Exited with exit code: 1 I try to work around it with things like this: <dict> <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>cd</string> <string>/Users/me/Library/Application\ Support/dir/;</string> <string>./script</string> </array> </dict> Those generally fail as well. It seems to be spaces in the path name, but there has to be a way to make spaces work. Application Support is a perfect place for me to store my scripts, and logs from those scripts, so far, no luck. Pipes are also an issue, or redirection, which I have not been able to get around. A basic echo "test" >> log.txt or one with a real | in it also do not work for me. A lot can be done in a short one liner as well, what is the trick, what are the limits? I generally just stuff all my code into a script, ~/bin is usually where I put it, and have launchd call it as /bin/bash /Users/me/ scriptname I seem to have a lot of trouble unloading items. There are cases where I have tested, and then deleted a plist, forgot to unload it. If I try to unload it, I of course have no file to point to, so I try to unload it by name. Neither works. I have ended up rebooting, but consider sending a HUP to launchd, but ps shows there to be a few more items in the list than I feel safe just restarting. Can someone also point me to docs or explain to me the 'WorkingDirectory' item. I al always cd'ing to a location where I do my work. I do not mind continuing to do that, but if defining 'WorkingDirectory' in a plist does what I think it does, it would be nice to have, as only a trigger to the person debugging it as to where the work is happening, without having to trace a ton of scripts calling each other. Thank you. -- Scott * If you contact me off list replace talklists@ with scott@ *

2 4

LaunchAgents folder permissions
by Peter Alshuth 29 May '09

29 May '09

Hi, We had some customers reporting that our product is not working. A further investigation turned out that the file permissions of the / Library/LaunchAgents folder was not the default one any more. Some other product that installed something into it had changed the permissions and preventing launchd to iterate the items in this folder to launch it. What is the best way to prevent this situation? Should my installer always check for the correct default permissions of /Library/ LaunchAgents & /Library/LaunchDaemons and change it back in case they were altered (what about compatibility issues with future OS X versions)? There is still a chance that the user runs the installer of the 'faulty' product at a later time and I have the same situation. Even if my daemon would check the permission bits of the /Library/ LaunchAgents folder at startup-time (bad solution), it might be already too late because launchd starts pre-handling the LaunchAgents folder maybe even before the LaunchDaemons-items get executed. Most customers are not familiar with the Terminal and typing some commands in order to fix this situation. Unfortunately, the 'Repair Disk Permissions' of the Disk Utility doesn't seem to change the permissions bit back to its original values of this folder. Thanks for any help, Peter

2 1

launchd at WWDC
by Quinn 29 May '09

29 May '09

Greetings All If you're interested in launchd and attending WWDC this year, don't miss the launchd session, Session 500 "Managing Process with launchd". Damien will be speaking and a bunch of us will be available for Q&A afterwards. S+E -- Quinn "The Eskimo!" <http://www.apple.com/developer/> Apple Developer Relations, Developer Technical Support, Core OS/Hardware

1 0

LoginItem issue on Tiger
by Arjun SM 29 May '09

29 May '09

Hi, I have written a small application which is a LaunchAgent and works fine on Leopard 10.5.x with the command launchctl load /Library/LaunchAgents/com.myname.myapp.plist. However on Tiger 10.4.11, since i know that launchAgents would not work accordingly i made my app as a loginItem by adding the path for my application in the loginwindow.plist. But the problem i am facing here is as soon as i install, my app would not launch immediately !( As on leopard 10.5.x ) . I have to logout and login again for application to launch, which i want to avoid. Can i in my postflight of the installer manually launch my application ?? what i mean by this is that ... in my postflight i would use "open <path to my application>" . This would no doubt launch my app , but i wanted to know if this is a good way of overcoming the problem?? what are its implications ?? thanks , Arjun

2 1

Re: [launchd-dev] WatchPaths
by Sven Schwyn 22 May '09

22 May '09

Acutally, all I'd need with launchd falling short is a tool like ... fse_sleep /path/to/watchtree It should just sleep there until a file in watchtree or below is modified and then exit with 0. But hey, I'm getting too off topic here :-) Cheers, -sven

1 0

Re: [launchd-dev] WatchPaths
by Sven Schwyn 22 May '09

22 May '09

Hi Quinn Thanks for your reply. I'm a Ruby dev and don't know enough about Obj- C to write a daemon with FSEvents (eventhough it would only need to watch a dir and it's subdirs and issue a SIGUSR1 to a given PID if a file changes). I was hoping launchd could do that task, but apparently it doesn't (yet). PS: I know FSEvents can be accessed through RubyCocoa, but it would have been too bloody beautiful to archieve the same without compilation :-) Cheers, -sven

1 0

WatchPaths
by Sven Schwyn 22 May '09

22 May '09

Hi I've looked at launchd as a replacement for filesystem polling, however, WatchPaths seems to be non-recursive, right? Is it possible to tweak launchd to watch an entire branch of the filesystem (including subdirs) or do plans exist to extend it this way? Thanks for your help! -sven

2 1

how to stop gmond
by Lajos Papp 11 May '09

11 May '09

Hi, i just installed ganglia-monitor, and it's postinstall script contained the following lines: #! /bin/sh launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.42quarks.gmond.plist launchctl start com.42quarks.gmond the plist contains this: <?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>EnvironmentVariables</key> <dict/> <key>KeepAlive</key> <true/> <key>Label</key> <string>com.42quarks.gmond</string> <key>Program</key> <string>/usr/local/sbin/gmond</string> <key>RunAtLoad</key> <true/> <key>StandardErrorPath</key> <string>/dev/null</string> <key>StandardOutPath</key> <string>/dev/null</string> </dict> </plist> I can see that /usr/local/sbin/gmond process is running and it's started by launchd. My problem is I can't stop the process. If i kill the gmond process by hand, of course it's restarting after a couple of seconds by launchd. But the strange thing is that launchctl list doesn't displays com.42quarks.gmond. So my question is how can i stop this process? cheers, lajos

3 2

gui doesn't launch at login
by Nehemiah Dacres 06 May '09

06 May '09

I have an account that no longer launches any processes after login. It's not the only account on the comp and not an admin account. The computer is an iMac G5 (2ghz 1GB ram) before iSite. the desktop doesn't change, i need to use a key combo to log out, which one it is I'm not sure because it takes a while and I try a few. (i think it's ctrl+option+esc). I think this might be an issue with the user's login script or preferences. what steps are there between login and system menubar service's startup? also, it may be important to note that the account was created before I upgraded to leopard, when it was running tiger. -- "lalalalala! it's not broken because I can use it" http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=194281&threshold=1&commentsort=0&…

1 0

Issue with LaunchAgents on Multiple users logged in
by Arjun SM 06 May '09

06 May '09

Hi, I have written a small menulet application and is running as a LaunchAgent. The problem that i am facing is while installing my app and in situation when multiple Users are logged in, - In my postflight i use the 'users' command to get as to how many users have logged in and launch my app in that Users context . Sample code # Launch Menulet for all the logged in Users for userName in `/usr/bin/users` do echo "Loading Menulet for $userName" su -l $userName -c "launchctl load -S Aqua /Library/LaunchAgents/com.myname.menulet.plist" done Now in a situation where i have opened the Terminal and logged in root, the /usr/bin/users would now show as 2 users logged in and i would try to launch my app in the roots context as well. Hence i am getting 2 Menulets with the same User. How can i solve this problem? Please help ... thanks in advance ~Arjun

2 1