I need to run my application on startup. So when the user boot up his Mac and is about to see his desktop, my application needs to launch. I set my app to run as launchd. I am using the QueuedDirectories flag in the plist of the launchd process. So if I place a file it launches up automatically. I have looked at the question - How do I launch an application on system startup? (Mac OSX, Cocoa). The suggested answer is to use launchd.
I have two questions -
In Macs where more than one accounts are present, the application does not launch for the other user(who has not installed it). In Windows you can install program for everyone. Is a similar thing possible on Mac. If so, I can use the Queued directory approach with launchd.
Is launchd the right way to start an application at startup/login in Lion as well. Or has Apple added any new feature with Lion which will allow this to be done in a smarter way. I looked up and everything does seem to point towards launchd.
I am targeting Snow leopard and Lion.
Yes, you should be using launchd. Have a look at my answer to this question.
Basically, you need to install your launchd configuration file in the root /Library/LaunchAgents/ folder rather than an individual user's ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ folder. That way, it will launch an instance for each user that logs in.
Related
I'm trying to run the setpriority command from my macOS app (objective-c). It never works and I'm assuming it is because the app is not being run as the root user.
I'm logged in to the admin account on my computer
I've tried opening the app with sudo
I've tried using chmod on the app
I've tried adding the app to the Accessibility list under Security and Privacy
Xcode version 9.2 (9C40b)
I would appreciate any help, thanks!
You want to run as root, or you want to run with sudo? There's a difference. Running as root is definitely not recommended, you will get strange behaviour from the system.
You wrote:
I've tried opening the app with sudo
That should work. How have you tried? You need to call the binary within the .app bundle. Running open against the bundle won't work.
e.g.
sudo ./Xcode.app/Contents/MacOS/Xcode
It's not recommended to run GUI apps on macOS as root. Instead, you should factor out the part of your application which needs root access into a separate helper tool, launch that tool as root using the SMJobBless() function, and then communicate with the tool using XPC.
Apple provides the EvenBetterAuthorizationSample example code to give a pretty good basic framework to work from.
EDIT: I decided to make my own authorization sample project a while ago that should be a little easier to use than the venerable EvenBetterAuthorizationSample. You can check it out at CSAuthSample.
I'm trying to use "wine" on MAC osX Sierra version 10.12, wine is version 1.9.19
In the terminal I can launch Windows applications, however its a pain to have to keep typing in:
/Applications/Wine\ Staging.app/Contents/MacOS/wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/HeidiSQL/heidisql.exe
I've searched around for a post on how to create shortcuts/applications to add to the launchpad, but so far none of the information has led me to a working end result. Either the locations of wine is different or it just doesn't work.
I've tried creating an application script:
do shell script "/Applications/Wine Staging.app/Contents/MacOS/wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/HeidiSQL/heidisql.exe"
But this won't run either.
For anyone having the same problem, in the end I created scripts which reside in my home folder:
Launch vi, create a file called HeidiSQL, insert:
wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/HeidiSQL/heidisql.exe
Save and exit file, grant file execute permissions:
chmod +x HeidiSQL
Launch wine terminal and type in ./HeidiSQL to launch, I then did the same for PSPad.exe:
wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files\ \(x86\)/PSPad\ editor/PSPad.exe
I know this thread is a little old but I was just looking for something like this to launch HeidiSQL and I came up with these three solutions which I have tried and all of them work. I am putting my findings down here for it may help someone:
Wineskin (http://wineskin.urgesoftware.com), Playonmac (https://www.playonmac.com/en) and Winebottler
(http://winebottler.kronenberg.org)
Wineskin is a mac app that download and install (and manages, updates, etc) "wine" for you. It then creates a HeidiSQL.app (any name you want with any icon you want - but you need to configure it) around the windows.exe that includes the wine version selected and is completely self contained (does not need wine installed separately). Personally this is the neatest solution and my preferred even though there its a little more technical than Playonmac and similar to Winebottler. You need to read the instructions (which are very good) and you have choices to make as to the wine version to use and to configure the app. Noteworthy is that you need to change the windows version to XP rather than 7 or some buttons won't work.
Playonmac on the other hand is very user friendly. It has HeidiSQL listed on its website as compatible and its almost a single click install. You just select HeidiSQL from the list of programs and it will download everything you need for you. The only reason I prefer Wineskin is that it does not create a true self contained HeidiSQL.app. You can create a shortcut for it in your Applications folder but this will launch Playonmac and the app needs to be installed inside Playonmac. On the plus side, Playonmac will chose all the right settings for you to run the app correctly, the correct windows and wine version etc which is something you need to fiddle with with with Wineskin.
Winebottler again makes an app like Wineskin. The only real difference I could see is that with Wineskin the configuration app is actually part of the package whereas in Winebottler you have to recreate the package each time you make a change. I stuck with Wineskin. YMMV.
I have a very strange issue with a sandboxed Mac app I'm developing. One requirement is that the user should have the possibility to launch the app when the system starts. For this, I'm using SMLoginItemSetEnabled() as described on http://blog.timschroeder.net/2012/07/03/the-launch-at-login-sandbox-project/.
When the user starts the app for the first time and enables this option, I can see an entry is being added to launchctl by using launchctl list. When I reboot the system, the app is not being started. More strange is the fact that the entry found using launchctl list has disappeared. However, a similar entry is still available in /private/var/db/launchd.db/com.apple.launchd.peruser.501/overrides.plist with key Disabled being false.
When I start the app manually and again set the option to start automatically, the entry is again available in launchctl list. When I reboot the system the app is being launched automatically. Concluding, for some reason SMLoginItemSetEnabled() only works the second time I run the app. Therefor it looks similar to this issue: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16354295/sandbox-app-with-loginitems-only-work-after-second-app-launch. However, no solution is provided.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16354295/sandbox-app-with-loginitems-only-work-after-second-app-launch
If you're like me, you probably had extra copies (generated by Xcode, etc) laying around that seem to confuse LaunchServices.
I wrote a post about it here: Login Items in macOS 10.11 and newer
But the short version is, use lsregister -dump to find all copies that LaunchServices knows about, remove them, then use lsregister -kill to reset the LaunchServices database when you're done.
I created a Command Line Tool app using Xcode.
In that app, I used NSWorkspace to launch another application bundle (.app) as suggested here.
MacOsX: How to launch an application (.app) from a "Command Line Tool" type of app
All seem to work fine until I tried to start that Command Line Tool app as a daemon using launchctl.
If the daemon is run as the currently logged in user, then the Command Line Tool app launches the external app just fine.
If the daemon is run as root, then the Command Line Tool app cannot launch the external app.
Using NSWorkspace to open an app doesn't seem to work if the daemon is run as root.
Does anyone know the correct way to open another app from a daemon that's running as root?
This is likely a security restriction within MacOS you're running into.
What I would suggest doing is to create a code-signed "helper tool" that resets itself (via setuid -- which I wouldn't do outside of a code-signed app) to the userid of currently logged in user, and then do the NSWorkspace trick to launch the app in that user context.
Creating helper tools is not trivial though. The grand concepts are described in Apple's Authorization Services Programming Guide.
Take a look at Apple's "SMJobBless" sample code, which shows how to install the helper tool that you could set the user rights on and then modify it's helper tool code to launch your app.
This is too complicated a subject to really address in a StackOverflow answer. The short answer is that daemons can't launch applications reliably. For the long answer, please read Apple's Technical Note TN2083: Daemons and Agents.
I finally got it working by using the code mentioned in this link to get the "console user's" uid and gid:
https://superuser.com/questions/180819/how-can-you-find-out-the-currently-logged-in-user-in-the-os-x-gui.
The link shows an example of how to use SCDynamicStoreCreate() and SCDynamicStoreCopyConsoleUser() to get "console user's" uid and gid.
After getting the uid and gid, just set the uid and gid to those of the console user before using NSWorkspace to open an app and that did the trick for me.
I have a daemon that needs to run as root and is started by launchd. This daemon needs to store some user supplied credentials so I have it writing them to the System keychain using SecKeychainOpen and similar functions.
I'm pretty sure that since this runs as root I have to use the System keychain (since using a user's login keychain is not correct as this doesn't run as a normal user).
My installer loads this into launchd using launchctl at the end of the install. The problem is that it doesn't actually start until after a reboot. I had OnLOad set as true in the plist, but it appears that when using the system keychain I need to the reboot for it to work.
I was wondering if anyone knows of some way to deal with this since it would be a much better user experience if a reboot was not necessary. So to be clear, can I programatically access the System keychain from a daemon using launchd without a reboot?
Thanks for any advice or ideas.
Since I eventually figured out that my problem wasn't what I thought it was at all, I figure I should put the resolution to it up here.
It turns out (despite what I read on a few sites) that it is perfectly OK to programatically access the System keychain with a daemon using launchd without a reboot. Just load the plist in the normal way (with root permission of course) and it all works.
My issue was the my postinstall script was never being run and was actually never even included in my .pkg installer when building on certain macs. Apparently, if you do not have PackageMaker.app installed, macports will still make a dmg with an installer for you, but the installer is a directory rather than the proper single file and it may lack certain parts (such as my postinstall script).
PackageMaker.app can be found on the Apple Developer site in the Xcode AuxTools package (it then needs to be put in either /Applications or somewhere else macports can find it).