Well, that was interesting.

I created a script, below, and a .plist, also below, and placed them in /usr/local/bin and /Library/LaunchAgents, respectively. When I issue
[code]launchctl load /Library/LaunchAgents/net.eccles.rolllogs[/code]
it causes launchd (and I don’t know if it’s a new process or launchd with a PID of 1) to consume 100% of a CPU forever. No new programs can run because nothing can get launched. So I have to 5-second-hold-the-power-button reboot, and the machine boots fine. But when I try to login, again, launchd goes out to launch… er, “lunch.” (Great. Now I’m hungry.)

I had a few episodes earlier in the day where I ran the script manually and it ran fine except that it griped because it didn’t have sufficient privileges to modify the /var/log/apache2 directory contents. So I ran it as sudo and it went off into la la land, never to return. Eventually, I rebooted and tried again, but this time it worked. A “top” showed that gzip was consuming CPU, as might be expected.

Is there something in my plist which would send launchctl out to lunch? Is there something in my script which looks crazy?

Thanks in advance,
Bill

rolllogs.sh
[code]
#!/bin/bash

# Update statistics for AWStats…
cd /Library/WebServer/awstats/wwwroot/cgi-bin
for i in `ls *.conf | sed -e ‘s/awstats.//’ -e ‘s/.conf//’` ; do
echo -n “${i}”;
/Library/WebServer/awstats/wwwroot/cgi-bin/awstats.pl -update -config=”$i”
done

cd /var/log/apache2/

for i in `ls *_log` ; do
echo “$i”;
if [ -f “${i}” ]; then
echo -n ” ${i}”
if [ -x /usr/bin/gzip ]; then gzext=”.gz”; else gzext=””; fi
if [ -f “${i}.6${gzext}” ]; then mv -f “${i}.6${gzext}” “${i}.7${gzext}”; fi
if [ -f “${i}.5${gzext}” ]; then mv -f “${i}.5${gzext}” “${i}.6${gzext}”; fi
if [ -f “${i}.4${gzext}” ]; then mv -f “${i}.4${gzext}” “${i}.5${gzext}”; fi
if [ -f “${i}.3${gzext}” ]; then mv -f “${i}.3${gzext}” “${i}.4${gzext}”; fi
if [ -f “${i}.2${gzext}” ]; then mv -f “${i}.2${gzext}” “${i}.3${gzext}”; fi
if [ -f “${i}.1${gzext}” ]; then mv -f “${i}.1${gzext}” “${i}.2${gzext}”; fi
if [ -f “${i}.0” ]; then mv -f “${i}.0” “${i}.1” && if [ -x /usr/bin/gzip ]; then gzip -9 “${i}.1”; fi; fi
if [ -f “${i}” ]; then mv -f “${i}” “${i}.0”; fi
fi

apachectl graceful

done
[/code]
and the plist, net.eccles.rolllogs.plist
[code]


Label
net.eccles.rolllogs
ProgramArguments

/usr/local/bin/rolllogs.sh

StartCalendarInterval

Day
0
Hour
3
Minute
15

It’s another instance of launchd.

Right now on this machine I have two instances of launchd running:

1 ?? 0:05.56 /sbin/launchd
114 ?? 0:02.15 /sbin/launchd

I’m not where I can send this machine into hysteria right now (it’s my primary work machine), but if I get a chance, I’ll try launchctl and see if it’s 114 that sucks up a CPU or if launchctl causes a new launchd to launch and suck up a CPU.

In either case, it seems to me that I’ve got something very, very wrong in either my script or my plist. Yesterday, I tried to set launchd logging level to debug, but still nothing showed up in system.log. (Evidence from Apple seems to suggest that there should be another log for launchd somewhere, but I can’t find it.) And, though I tried to “launchd bash” per Apple’s suggestion that doesn’t work–it just gripes that it can’t be run directly.

Yikes…

OK, if I understand the plist correctly, that’s something I can do in the launchd plist for this.

Since it’s a shell script, I presume there’s no automatic loop unrolling or anything like that, though, right? So only one instance of awstats or one instance of gzip would be running, correct?

In either case, when I run this script manually, CPU is never above 30% for the entire time that the thing is running, and I can see each of the perl and gzip processes being executed, so I guess that begs the question, why is a launchd process hogging the CPU? If I use launchd to fire off the script, does it somehow hide all of what it’s doing, such as the perl and gzipping? Or should I be able to see them running as they’re fired off?

I don’t even think my script gets to being run, quite frankly.

Perhaps… perhaps if you (or someone else) have a script and accompanying plist that I could experiment with, one that you know works on your machine, I could try that. I’m still unconvinced that my plist is completely correct, that there’s not something odd in it that launchd is hanging up on.

Thanks,
Bill