[launchd-dev] Daemon & Network Availability?

Karl Moskowski kolpanic at voodooergonomics.com
Mon Nov 10 12:12:35 PST 2008


So, I've been doing a bit of research, and I've noticed a couple of  
effects:
- for the launchd checkin process to succeed, the daemon's plist needs  
a Sockets section and ServiceIPC=true
- at boot time, to have the daemon launch only when the network is  
available, set RunAtLoad=false and KeepAlive={NetworkState=true}
These two are independent; if I omit the Sockets & ServiceIPC and  
checkin in main(), then reboot with no network, the daemon starts  
after I connect the ethernet cable.

There are few complications:
- launchd loads the daemon as soon as the network interface is  
available, before it has a valid IP address.
- launchd loads the daemon at boot if any network interfaces are  
connected (e.g., Parallels ports)
- launchd doesn't unload the daemon automatically if the network goes  
down

To workaround the first two, I guess I could put a reachability test  
in the initialization code of main() and exit if I can't get to the  
server, allowing launchd to reload the daemon automatically. For the  
last, I can also exit if the connection dies and let launchd control  
resurrection.

What do you think?

----
Karl Moskowski <kolpanic at voodooergonomics.com>
Voodoo Ergonomics Inc. <http://voodooergonomics.com/>

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 2441 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/launchd-dev/attachments/20081110/746859ba/attachment-0001.bin>


More information about the launchd-dev mailing list