Creating a system starter entry on MacOSX
Posted 2009-06-10 12:26:36 by oisin.

Related tags: mac osx macosx apache systemstarter

I built my own version of Apache on my mac. I wanted my Mac to use this after I disabled the default Apache that comes with OSX. To do this I needed to create a SystemStarter entry. This was a fairly straight forward process. The end result was Apache persisting across machine reboots.

References

Creating a system starter entry

  1. Create a folder in /Library/StartupItems.
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sudo mkdir /Library/StartupItems/OisinApache
  1. Create an executable script with the same name as the folder.
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sudo vi /Library/StartupItems/OisinApache/OisinApache

#!/bin/sh
. /etc/rc.common

# The start subroutine
StartService() {
        ConsoleMessage "OisinApache: starting apache (/opt/web/bin/httpd)"
    /opt/web/bin/httpd -f /opt/web/conf/httpd.conf
        ConsoleMessage "OisinApache: running."
}

# The stop subroutine
StopService() {
        ConsoleMessage "OisinApache: Stopping apache (killall httpd)"
    killall httpd
        ConsoleMessage "OisinApache: stopped."
}

# The restart subroutine
RestartService() {
        ConsoleMessage "OisinApache: restarting apache (/opt/web/bin/httpd)"
    StopService
    sleep 1
    StartService
        ConsoleMessage "OisinApache: restarted."
}
  1. Create a StartupParamets.plist in the same place as the executable script.
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sudo vi /Library/StartupItems/OisinApache/StartupParamets.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist SYSTEM "file://localhost/System/Library/DTDs/PropertyList.dtd">
<plist version="0.9">
    <dict>
        <key>Description</key>
        <string>Oisin's Compile Apache</string>

        <key>OrderPreference</key>
        <string>Late</string>

        <key>Provides</key>
        <array>
                <string>OisinApache</string>
        </array>

        <key>Uses</key>
        <array>
                <string>SystemLog</string>
        </array>
    </dict>
</plist>
}}}
  1. Done! If you followed the above you can now use the following command line to start, stop or restart apache.
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sudo SystemStarter {start | stop | restart} OisinApache