Removing automatically processes from launchd

Question

Removing automatically processes from launchd

From the activity monitor I can see that I have various unnecessary processes automatically started, e.g., I have laciebackupd running from some backup software that came with my external harddrive. I can tell that the process has been started by launchd since it's listed by list in launchctl. The software doesn't come with an option to not start it at startup. How do I remove this process from the list of processes that launchd starts. The process is not listed in a plist under any of the five standard directories:

~/Library/LaunchAgents/
/Library/LaunchAgents/
/Library/LaunchDaemons/
/System/Library/LaunchAgents/
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/

Thank you

/Peter

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.4)

Posted on Aug 16, 2008 1:31 PM

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Answer 1

V.K.

Level 9

56,192 points

Aug 16, 2008 1:34 PM in response to boston_turtle

also check /Library/Startupitems and your login items in system preferences->accounts.

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Answer 2

Aug 16, 2008 3:34 PM in response to boston_turtle

go to the terminal and type the following command to list by label all the processes that are initiated by launchd:

launchctl list

Then locate the label of the specific process you wish to stop/unload, and then run the following commands:

To stop the process:
launchctl stop process_label

To unload the process:
launchctl remove process_label

If you use the following command to unload the process fully, you will need the full path to the .plist file:

launchctl unload fullpath_tofile

Note that many process will be listed in the various "LaunchAgents" and "LaunchDaemons" folder under different names than the actual label. In the .plist files there is the option to give the process a label, so you can have a file called "com.wahoo.bignastyprocess.plist" but the process label and what's seen in launchctl could be something like "sweetlittleprocess"...

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