I am running a JXA script as an agent using launchctl. The main logic of the script is supposed to be run at intervals of 2 seconds, which I have achieved using an infinite loop and delay. However, whenever my macbook goes to sleep the script stops execution and I have to unload and load the agent manually again.
My script:
for(;;) {
// (Open browser and check whether a tab exisits or not)
<APPLICATION LOGIC >
delay(2);
}
Can I do something to ensure that this script keeps on running even after my macbook wakes up?
Based on the suggestion by CJK, I am now executing my JXA script, every 5 seconds, using launchctl and the following plist:
<?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>Label</key>
<string>google-meet.job</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/usr/bin/osascript</string>
<string>/Users/porter/Library/Script Libraries/Brave - Google Meet Running.scpt</string>
</array>
<key>StartInterval</key>
<integer>5</integer>
</dict>
</plist>
You can control the frequency of execution of your script using the StartInterval key.
Related
I have a number of launch agents I've written over the years to automate some simple tasks, like rsyncing my music and photos from my laptop to my NAS. Recently I've noticed that they have stopped running daily like they used to. Instead, they're only running when I log in. Here's a sample launchagent:
<?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>Label</key>
<string>com.mwheinz.backup_photos</string>
<key>Program</key>
<string>/Users/michaelheinz/bin/backup_photos</string>
<key>StartInterval</key>
<integer>86400</integer>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>
When I run them with "debug" it says they are configured to run "at launch":
~ ยป sudo launchctl debug gui/501/com.mwheinz.backup_books
Password:
Service configured for next launch.
Any suggestions? One thing I've noticed is that launchd now insists I refer to my agents as "gui/501/<label>" instead of just "<label>".
Okay - I figured it out. The problem for me was that the syntax for the plists changed at some point. This syntax:
Program
/Users/michaelheinz/bin/backup_books
StartInterval
became this syntax:
ProgramArguments
/Users/michaelheinz/bin/backup_books
StartInterval
I changed all my plists and they started working again.
I'd like to run an app I created via Automator every 5 minutes, so I placed the following com.user.wilson.plist file in this folder:
/Library/LaunchAgents
<?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>Label</key>
<string>com.user.wilson</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/usr/bin/open</string>
<string>-a</string>
<string>/Users/paul/Documents/Wilson/Script/mt-wilson-background_app</string>
</array>
<key>StartInterval</key>
<integer>300</integer>
</dict>
</plist>
Then, I loaded it using the following command in the terminal:
launchctl load Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.wilson.plist
but for some reason, the app never runs.
I can, however, successfully run the app using this command:
/usr/bin/open -a /Users/paul/Documents/Wilson/Script/mt-wilson-background_app
Any ideas why the .plist file won't do what I'm expecting it to?
In order to see what's going wrong, you can add a log file in your plist like 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>Label</key>
<string>com.user.wilson</string>
<key>StandardErrorPath</key>
<string>/Users/paul/Documents/Wilson/Script/err.log</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/usr/bin/open</string>
<string>-a</string>
<string>/Users/paul/Documents/Wilson/Script/mt-wilson-background_app</string>
</array>
<key>StartInterval</key>
<integer>300</integer>
</dict>
</plist>
Note: For the modifications to take effect, unload and load again:
launchctl unload Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.wilson.plist
launchctl load Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.wilson.plist
Typically, if the err.log says it can't find your app, it means it's a permission issue.
I would suggest you try to move your app from /Users/paul/Documents/Wilson/Script/mt-wilson-background_app to /Users/paul/Documents/mt-wilson-background_app
Then update your plist accordingly, unload an reload your plist, is it working better now?
I ran into nearly the exact same problem. I finally (FINALLY!!!) found a cure that worked for me.
Originally, the broken version of the .plist launch agent that wouldn't run no matter what I tried was in /Library/LaunchAgents. Moving the agent to /Users/[me]/LaunchAgents eliminated the "Application Not Running" error.
It seems counterintuitive since the root agent should be able to run everything from any location, but I can only guess that AppleScript's check to see if an app is running or not is user account-dependent somehow. I'm betting there's something you can add to the AppleScript to actually fix this the "right" way, but this works well enough for me, so I'm taking the win.
I'm trying to make sure a process is always running, even after it quits, crashes or stops in anyway. It's a small binary that reads a serial line and writes to a database - nothing too complex. If it fails to read, it quits with exitcode 70 and it captures any SIGKILL or SIGTERM events and shuts down it's database connections gracefully before actually quitting.
However, the process does NOT launch at load (even though this flag is set), nor does it restart if it is killed. Here is the plist:
<?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>Disabled</key>
<false/>
<key>KeepAlive</key>
<true/>
<key>Label</key>
<string>blah.bloop.tag05</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/Users/blah/Desktop/rfid</string>
<string>-f/dev/tty.usbserial-FT32X30YBXB</string>
<string>-n5</string>
<string>-ctcp://127.0.01</string>
<string>-v</string>
<string>-x100000</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
<key>StandardErrorPath</key>
<string>/var/log/rfid.log</string>
<key>StandardOutPath</key>
<string>/var/log/rfid.log</string>
<key>WorkingDirectory</key>
<string>/Users/blah/Desktop</string>
</dict>
</plist>
This plist lives in ~/Library/LaunchAgents (and the user in question can stop and start this process easily enough).
Any thoughts at all? I know there are other processes that are being restarted but I can't for the life of me figure out this one. I thought permissions might be it but these all seem fine :/
I decided to try another plist to see if it was my daemon program at fault. Turns out, it's launchd:
So I decided to run a quick test, using the program tail. I wanted to see if it was my daemon process itself or something to do with launchd. It seems that launchd is the problem. Here is an alternative and simple plist:
<?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>KeepAlive</key>
<true/>
<key>Label</key>
<string>test.test</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/usr/bin/tail</string>
<string>-f</string>
<string>/var/log/system.log</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
<key>StandardErrorPath</key>
<string>/tmp/test.test.err</string>
<key>StandardOutPath</key>
<string>/tmp/test.test.out</string>
</dict>
</plist>
I launch this process using the following command
launchctl load test.plist
launchctl start test.test
I then kill the process from another terminal by sending either SIGKILL or SIGTERM to the process with the kill command. Launchd fails to restart the process.
I suspect there must be something new in El-Capitan that I've missed?
Further experimentation has revealed an answer. It appears that only Daemons, such as 'Global Daemons' respect the restart and RunAtLaunch directives. I notice that there are a couple of plists in /Library/LaunchDaemons such as these for TeamViewer and other third party programs.
Interestingly, one can send SIGKILL to processes belonging to Apple such as ImageCaptureAgent and the KeepAlive directive is NOT respected. This is an Apple defined agent plist file that explicitly states a process should be restarted if it is killed, but it does not.
I wonder if Apple changed this functionality in the newer release?
I have a simple launchd plist file that I am using to run a shell script that is designed to restart the computer:
<?xml vesion="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>Label</key>
<string>com.sag95.restartscript</string>
<key>KeepAlive</key>
<false/>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<false/>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/Users/sag95/Desktop/Scripts/restartscript.sh</string>
</array>
<key>StartInterval</key>
<integer>300</integer>
</dict>
</plist>
The script file is a single line force restart command(password in real file, not placed here):
echo <password> | sudo -S shutdown -r now
Once I load the plist file using
launchctl load com.sag95.restartscript.plist
it appears in the list (launchctl list). Currently I have the plist file to run the script every 5 minutes. After the 5 minutes of loading, the script is called the first time and subsequently restarts the computer. Once I login, the launchd plist file is no longer in the list (launchctl list). I waited 30 minutes and it hasn't run again to restart my computer.
My question is why is the com.sag95.restartscript plist file unloading after the restart/force reboot?
launchctl load only loads it for the current session. Next time you log in, it loads your list of launch agents from /System/Library/LaunchAgents/*.plist, /Library/LaunchAgents/*.plist, and /Users/sag95/Library/LaunchAgents/*.plist. If the file isn't in one of these folders, it will not get loaded.
Assuming you want it to run only when you are logged in, place the file in /Users/sag95/Library/LaunchAgents. If you wanted it to run for any logged in user, put it in /Library/LaunchAgents instead (but with this specific script, the password will only work for your account, so this wouldn't be useful).
I'm trying to run a shell script at boot with launchd, via a plist file in /Library/LaunchDaemons (on 10.8.x, if that matters):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>testD</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/Users/lfriedman/cuda-stuff/sw/gpgpu/build/scripts/testing/testD.sh</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
<key>KeepAlive</key>
<true/>
<key>UserName</key>
<string>lfriedman</string>
<key>AbandonProcessGroup</key>
<false/>
<key>StandardOutPath</key>
<string>/tmp/testD.out</string>
<key>StandardErrorPath</key>
<string>/tmp/testD.err</string>
</dict>
</plist>
Inside the shell script is a call to 'hostname -s'. If I run the script manually, everything works fine. If I run the script via cron, everything works fine. However, when it runs at boot via launchd the value returned from 'hostname -s' is always (erroneously) returned as 'localhost', rather than the actual hostname of the system. If I tweak the plist to run the script at a time other than at bootup, it also does the right thing and returns the actual short hostname of the system. This leads me to think that there's some sort of race condition going on where launchd is firing off its jobs before the network subsystem of the OS is fully running.
Is there some special way to ensure that the OS is "fully" booted before launchd runs a job? Or a way to force a delay inside the plist file before the program is invoked?
Unfortunately, launchd doesn't have a way of setting dependencies, so you'll need to have the delay in your script. In a shell script, an easy way to check for networking is:
#!/bin/bash
# Example Daemon Starter
. /etc/rc.common
CheckForNetwork
while [ "${NETWORKUP}" != "-YES-" ]
do
sleep 5
NETWORKUP=
CheckForNetwork
done
# Now do what you need to do.
You can see more info at the following link:
http://blog.slaunchaman.com/2010/07/01/how-to-run-a-launchdaemon-that-requires-networking/