What's the easiest way to have a script run at boot time in OS X?
Solution 1
MacOS X uses Vixie cron, which has special meta tags for launching at reboot time. See the man page for the file format.
something like:
@reboot /path/to/script.sh
in your crontab would work. I'm not sure that this a better solution than launchd, you probably have more meta tools that look at launchd than cron.
Solution 2
In case you change your opinion:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.superuser.245713</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/path/to/script.sh</string>
</array>
<key>UserName</key>
<string>someuser</string>
</dict>
</plist>
Store as com.superuser.245713.plist
in /Library/LaunchAgents/
and make root:wheel
the owner/group.
Solution 3
There are also Login Hooks if you would prefer the script to run (as root) when a user logs in rather than when the machine is booted.
Here is an example which provides a briefer explanation about them: How to run a script at login/logout in OS X?
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John Bachir
Formerly CTO at Freedom, Co-Founder & CTO at Medstro.
Updated on September 17, 2022Comments
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John Bachir almost 2 years
I want a script (bash/zsh/ruby/...) to run at boot time in OS X. What's the most simple way to do this, without messing with xml/plist files, and preferably not needing to make a meta AppleScript.
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HikeMike over 13 yearsLove it, you proved me wrong :-) Although
cron
on OS X is not that great with logging by default (there was a topic on that just a few days ago). -
Doug Harris over 13 yearsIt's arguably better to put it into
/Library/LaunchAgents
rather than/System/Library/LaunchDaemons
since/System
is OS-specific stuff and the one under/Library
is used more for third party stuff. Also,LaunchDaemons
"should contain items that will run as root, generally background processes" where asLaunchAgents
"run as a user or in the context of userland". The source for those quotes is a great article on launchd that I consult for launchd questions. -
HikeMike over 13 years@DougHarris Thanks for the suggestions! I have to admit I was just typing this ad-hoc -- while I usually test my solutions, I wasn't willing to restart my machine for this.
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John Bachir over 13 yearsthis is perfect.
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John Bachir over 13 yearsThis is very nice, although I like the Vixie cron solution better :)
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Norman Gray over 13 yearsNote that cron, at, and so on are to some extent deprecated in OS X. I can't find an explicit statement of that in the various docs, nor do I know how aggressively deprecated they are, but launchd does seem generally preferred. See the launchd documentation for an introduction.
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Gordon Davisson about 12 yearsActually, it should be put in /Library/LaunchDaemons. Agents only run inside a user session, i.e. they won't run (or more precisely, become eligible to run) until someone logs in, will run again every time someone logs in, and always run as the currently logged in user. Daemons run (/become eligible to run) at boot, and while they normally run as root, can be run as some other user with the UserName key.
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HikeMike over 10 years@the0ther The web doesn't forget.
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BGBRUNO over 8 yearsplist won't work for me - this works like a charm - thank you! :-D
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NobleUplift over 5 yearsHonestly wasn't sure if the syntax would be the same on OS X.