[launchd-dev] Stray Proccess Log message

[Nathan Duran]

On Feb 22, 2008, at 1:54 AM, Quinn wrote:

> I have no idea why you're seeing this message for Locum and
> NetAuthAgent, but it's obvious that something has gone terribly
> wrong.  Regardless, it's not relevant to Geoff's original question.

It's happening to a lot of people, so I'd agree that many things are  
terribly wrong with 10.5.2. However, at times when your users and the  
people who sign your paychecks are one and the same, the ability to  
determine whether or not a given error message is your fault or  
Apple's can become surprisingly relevant.

I believe that launchd's numerous undocumented features and behaviors  
coupled with its oftentimes cryptically terse function names and error  
messages ("Workaround Bonjour" stall anyone?) are responsible for a  
lot of people resisting the "use it or else" mantra, thereby slowing  
its adoption rate both internally and externally. I've seen invalid  
Apple-shipped plists, Apple-shipped daemons that don't cooperate with  
launchd at all (try keeping vpnd alive)  and plenty of stuff like this:

launchctl: Please convert the following to launchd: /etc/mach_init.d/ 
chum.plist
launchctl: Please convert the following to launchd: /etc/mach_init.d/ 
dashboardadvisoryd.plist
launchctl: Please convert the following to launchd: /etc/mach_init.d/ 
pilotfish.plist

Did these guys just not get the memo, or was the memo difficult to get  
through? If those "Stray process" messages conveyed the whole of what  
had transpired in easily digestible terms, Geoff probably wouldn't  
have had a question to begin with.

Here's a rather extreme example from another department that certainly  
leaves nothing to the imagination:

"This application is trying to draw a very large combo box, 145 points  
tall.  Vertically resizable combo boxes are not supported, but it  
happens that 10.4 and previous drew something that looked kind of sort  
of okay.  The art in 10.5 does not break up in a way that supports  
that drawing.  To avoid breaking existing apps, NSComboBox in 10.5  
will use the 10.4 art for large combo boxes, but it won't exactly  
match the rest of the system.  This application should be revised to  
stop using large combo boxes.  This warning will appear once per app  
launch."

It's just a hunch, but I'd bet nobody's asking what the heck that  
means on their list ;)