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launchd with StartCalendarInterval inconsistencies

I have auditing turned on full (flags: all) on two machines: my Mac Pro workstation and a headless Mac Mini I will be using as a web server. Both are running the latest Snow Leopard. I created a script to rotate the audit logs, and I created a launchd configuration file to run this script one minute after midnight. The launchd plist file is in /Library/LaunchDaemons. Both machines are set not to go to sleep.

On the workstation it fired off fine: at 1 minute after midnight.
On the Mac Mini it didn't fire off until 5:24 am.

Does anyone know why launchd runs the script at the correct time on the Mac Pro, whereas the Mac Mini doesn't get around to launching it over 5 hours late?

Here is the launchd plist file:

<?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.netsq.RotateAuditLogs</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/etc/security/RotateAuditLogs</string>
</array>
<key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
<dict>
<key>Hour</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>Minute</key>
<integer>1</integer>
</dict>
<key>UserName</key>
<string>root</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Mac Mini 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.6.4), running headless

Posted on Aug 3, 2010 8:18 AM

Reply
1 reply

Aug 3, 2010 10:01 AM in response to Todd Heberlein1

Couple of additional facts that might be useful.

1) The Mac Mini has the firewall turned on, whereas the workstation does not.

2) The network has no active traffic on it at night since no one is using any computers (just background chatter the computers sometimes generate).

So the Mac Mini has no monitor, mouse, or keyboard. The firewall is turned on. There is very little network traffic.

launchd with StartCalendarInterval inconsistencies

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