[X-Unix] How make launchd stop trying to launch nonexistent program?

Jerry Krinock jerry at ieee.org
Wed Apr 16 19:57:19 PDT 2008


To make a long story short, I've got my launchd trying to launch a  
program that does not exist.  I get this in Console.app every 10  
seconds:

08/04/16 18:18:08 com.apple.launchd[1]  
(com.example.BetterAuthorizationSample[1146]) posix_spawnp("/Library/ 
PrivilegedHelperTools/com.example.BetterAuthorizationSample", ...): No  
such file or directory
08/04/16 18:18:08 com.apple.launchd[1]  
(com.example.BetterAuthorizationSample[1146]) Exited with exit code: 1
08/04/16 18:18:08 com.apple.launchd[1]  
(com.example.BetterAuthorizationSample) Throttling respawn: Will start  
in 10 seconds

I want to stop this.  Killing the program which requested the launch  
does not help; apparently launchd is doing this repeatedly under its  
own power.  I commanded launchctl to 'list', and found what looked  
like the offending process label which was  
"0x112e20.BetterAuthorizat".  That's a rather strange label but it is  
correct, because if I mis-spell it in a command to launchctl, I get  
"No such process", but if I spell it exactly like that, it "takes" it.

This command:

     launchctl stop 0x112e20.BetterAuthorizat

had no effect.  This command:

     launchctl remove 0x112e20.BetterAuthorizat

removed it from 'launchctl list' output, but did not stop the  
attempted launch every 10 seconds.  I don't see any other ideas in man  
launchctl.  Log-out/in does not stop it.  Only a restart will stop the  
repeated attempted launching.

Restarts were for Mac OS 9, though.  Does anyone know the smart way to  
stop this?

Thanks,

Jerry




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