Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Name

register_mach_bootstrap_servers

Synopsis

register_mach_bootstrap_servers config_source
                  

Registers a Mach port with the bootstrap task of mach_init on behalf of a specified daemon. (A Mach task is analogous to a process that runs within the kernel of Mac OS X; a port is used to communicate between tasks.) When another task sends a request to the bootstrap task for access to a port, mach_init starts up the associated daemon if necessary.

This serves as a replacement for certain startup items on Panther. Instead of launching services from /System/Library/StartupItems/ (processed by SystemStarter), files in /etc/mach_init.d/ are processed by register_mach_bootstrap_servers, which is called from /etc/rc. (Per-user services are started by the login window application, which uses register_mach_bootstrap_servers to process /etc/mach_init_per_user.d/.) One advantage of this over startup items is that a daemon can be run only when needed, if another process needs to communicate with it, thus reducing resource consumption.

Options

config_source

Either an XML property list (.plist) file, or a directory containing such files. Each file is usually named after the associated daemon, and contains some of the following keys:

command

The path to the server executable. This is a required key.

isKUNCServer

Specify whether the daemon is kuncd, the Kernel-User Notification Center server, used by the kernel to communicate with users. Defaults to false.

OnDemand

Specify whether the daemon should only be ...