I recently tried delete Steam.app from Mac OS X 10.10.5. As soon as I hit Command-Backspace to remove the application, this dialog appeared:
The text reads:
Steam still has some game content stored at /Users/apaidnerd/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps. Do you want to delete the game content as well?
[Leave files] [Reveal in Finder] [Delete files]
How did the Steam application cause this to happen? If I'm developing an app for Mac OS X, where is this documented?
You were close. It looks to me like the launch agent "com.valvesoftware.steamclean" is responsible for this. Unloading the "com.valvesoftware.steam.ipctool" agent/service may effectively disable the other one.
The steamclean agent's description plist file is in ~/Library/LaunchAgents. It doesn't poll. It has a WatchPaths key, which asks launchd to run it when that path changes. launchd uses file system notification techniques to monitor that, which also don't rely on polling.
When that happens, the agent runs the program ~/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/steamclean, which is not in the Steam.app bundle. It couldn't be, because the app bundle has been moved or renamed, so launchd would not be able to find the program for the agent. steamclean is what shows the dialog. You can confirm this by reproducing the dialog and leaving it open. Then, use Activity Monitor to list the processes and filter for "steam".
Figured it out. Steam has a launchctl agent that runs (com.valvesoftware.steam.ipctool) out of the /Applications/Steam.app/ directory. If I stop the daemon and remove the Steam.app, no dialog appears.
It must poll to see if its executable path still exists and prompts the user if goes missing. Also, the inactive-looking title bar implies that this dialog is indeed coming from some sort of background process.
Related
I writing an app for Mac, one of it's components is a launchctl agent that runs in background.
As mac apps are removed by dragging to trash (I can understand this logic but takes getting used to after years of windows dev'ing), I'm wondering is there anything I can do to cleanup after myself when the user removes the app?
specifically the running background process and its .plist file.
Edit:
After some more thinking about the issue, I have an idea to put a listener on the background process file, get notified if it's deleted, then remove itself from launchctl, delete plist and kill itself. can this work?
I have to run some code when the app is about to terminate. applicationShouldTerminate: runs when quit is selected from the menu or when I press Cmd Q but not when I restart the mac.
Is there a way to force applicationShouldTerminate when a user tries to restart the mac? Or is it another function being called in this scenario?
Your app might have Sudden Termination enabled.
macOS 10.6 and later includes a mechanism that allows the system to log out or shut down more quickly by, whenever possible, killing applications instead of requesting that they quit themselves.
...
Debugging tip
You can determine the value of the sudden termination using the following LLDB command.
print (long)[[NSClassFromString(#"NSProcessInfo") processInfo] _suddenTerminationDisablingCount]
I'm working on a new OS-X Daemon process (run from launchd) and would like to get popup window every time it crashes with all relevant information (pid, path to crash file, etc...). This will sure help my debugging effort in this early stage of the development.
Basically, i want to have the same behavior as a UI application. For example :
I've made some research and found out about the CrashReporter, but i don't know how to register my app to this service. But it seem like there's no way to trigger popup windows from this service, since crashes are system level events and apps have zero interaction with those.
Maybe there's a way to do so by setting up some parameters in app bundle or via Info.plist ?
EDIT: looking at the crash report manual, it looks like the unexpected dialog works only on GUI user mode, and not on daemon that runs from launchd. perhaps i'm missing something ?
In addition, if the program that crashed is running as a logged in GUI user, CrashReporter will present the user with a dialog asking them whether they want to submit a bug report to Apple (see Figure 1). If the user clicks the Report button, CrashReporter displays another dialog that shows the details of the report (see Figure 2) and allows them to comment it before submission.
I've read that Developer option enable in addition to application crashes, crashes are also displayed for background and system processes. but unfortunately i doesn't work for me.
thanks
Seems like the problem occurs since my background process runs under root privilege, and root privilage process (not just daemons) cannot initiate any UI widget on the screen.
I guess that the only way to deal with it, is by catching the signal that trigger the crash, and send details for a proxy process that run on non-root mode and can initiate the UI dialog box with crash details.
I would be happy to hear for better proposals.
Since CrashReporterPrefs, which allowed you to enable this behavior for daemons, no longer comes with developer tools, you can change the behavior to show the dialog for daemons by running this command in the Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType Developer
I've created a bash script which does some complex stuff, including some bits of Applescript which involves clicking pop ups, its to run on every new account created on the machine to set up some browser extensions for users (Adblock etc)
The script runs when manually invoked just fine, but when put as a LaunchAgent is erratic at best. It seems to run whilst the create account login/password screen is up - it opens a welcome PDF for a start off and sometimes when you log in, preview is already open without the file.
Othertimes you log in and nothing happens for a good 50 seconds. Occasionally its behaviour is erratic too.
The script needs to run as a launchagent as it runs once per new account - the script actually deletes the launchagent plist at the end so it can't run again. Is there anyway to delay the running of the script to have it start once the desktop is fully loaded? Perhaps once the dock has appeared. I'm going to assume its trying to run too early, it can't open Preview or Safari, it tries to delete the plist which is in use and then just ends up in a confused loop. Obviously not the cleanest way to run.
Is there any way to automatically launch an application on USB attach or CD insert on Mac OS X? it's easy on Windows, but I found that AutoRun.Inf does not work on the Mac at all.
You can't. Autostarting applications is impossible under Mac OS X.
The next-best thing, opening the CD folder and showing the installer icon, can be done by using (AutoOpen version 1.0) to make a .dmg which can then be burnt to a CD.
Basically, auto-run is considered a security problem and so is not supported in OSX. Sophie Alpert's answer is also a bit overkill. Most installers for OSX simply open up a folder to show the application and, possibly, a readme. Installing is done by dragging the app to your Applications folder.
For other kinds of apps on CDs (say, a slide show or something like that), the developer generally uses hidden folders to hide support data to ensure that the only thing the user will see when they open the CD is the single icon they're supposed to double click to start the app.
It is possible to install a background service that monitors whenever a USB device is plugged in and then launches an App. Google's "Android File Transfer Agent" is such a service that is running in the background and launches "Android File Transfer" whenever you plug in an Android device.
If you are looking for something for just yourself, you could write a small mac app that runs in the background and watches for a particular USB device (by id) to be attached and then run the program. Ideally a small XML plist could be used to map device IDs to the correct program to run. The XCode SDK has sample code that monitors for device additional and removal to get you started.
I agree with JavaCoderEx. I would crontab a task that looks for /Volumes/*/autorun.sh, then runs it once. Maybe touch a file in /tmp/ so you know its already been run, then remove it if the volume disappears.