[launchd-dev] Penalty box property?

26 Oct 2016

      Hello All,

I have a launchd system service, that will stop running at seemingly odd times. The service just launches a bash script to rsync files over the network. However the launchd service will stop launching and gives me different error codes. However I can’t find any information on the launchd property of "penalty box”. Does anyone know what that does or means? When the service fails it always seems to have the state of spawning...

Stderr does not produce anything.

The script lives on the network and will run successfully most of the time. Once the launchd gets in this state it just fails unless I bootout/bootstrap the plist again.

Any suggestions?

Here is some more information.

root# launchctl print system/com.laika.localsync
com.laika.localsync = {
	active count = 0
	path = /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.laika.localsync.plist
	state = spawning
minimum runtime = 10
	exit timeout = 5
	nice = 20
	runs = 1
	successive crashes = 0
	excessive crashing = 0
	last exit code = 78: EX_CONFIG
properties = {
	penalty box = 1
}

root# launchctl list com.laika.localsync
"LastExitStatus" = 19968;

Nick Zolotko
Desktop System Administrator