Does launchd work in El Capitan?

[CapU]

I am attempting to get an app to start when the user logs (Alertus) I think I have the right files in the right places.
Has anyone else had any issues with launchd and El Capitan?
Thanks in advance

[CapU]

Nevermind!! I used LaunchControl to get me out of the weeds

[rickwhois]

Can you describe how you got Alertus to open up on user login (without admin prompt)? I've been wrestling this ironically all day

[CapU]

LOL rickwhois. I didn't have that issue. Mine was getting the app to run for every user.
I used Composer to capture the install, copied into CasperAdmin. I don't know if you were having issues with it not installing due to the previous version running, but I created a script which stops the previous version. I used a policy trigger to call the actual install of the new version. Previous versions would just overwrite the old one and start up. Not this one. So I then used composer to package up com.alertus.AlertusDesktopClient.plist and used LaunchControl to save the plist to /Library/LaunchAgents

[rickwhois]

HA! We must have a really old version of Alertus. (2.6.22.187) If installed by the user, it opens fine the first time. But when installed by casper or ard, it will not get added to startup items for any user. so i have a policy that adds this for every user. osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to make new login item with properties { path: "/Applications/Alertus Desktop.app" } at end'. Works great except for the fact that every user gets an admin prompt to allow allow Alertus to make changes the first time it opens up.

I'm hoping we can attain a newer version.

[CapU]

Our last version was 2.9.30.1600. We have people here that watch the server to make sure all of the systems are reporting correctly.

[jesseshipley]

Just as a tip for easier LaunchAgent/Daemon management @CapU I find it easier to echo the plist into place from a script in the JSS. That way don't have to deal with repackaging if you ever edit it.

[rickwhois]

just wanted to let you know, we've updated to the latest version, 2.9.30.1700 and it loads (without admin prompt) for all users. (FUT & FEU). If there's a newer version available for you as well might resolve your issue

[jhuls]

Doing some searches on Alertus to see what people are saying about it and came across this thread. The powers that be here purchased it and I'm now taking a look at it and how to deploy it. For those more curious about how it's loading it's not FUT & FEU but a LaunchAgent located at /Library/LaunchAgents/com.alertus.AlertusDesktopClient.plist.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.alertus.AlertusDesktopClient</string>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/Applications/Alertus Desktop.app/Contents/MacOS/Alertus Desktop</string>
    <key>LimitToSessionType</key>
    <string>Aqua</string>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

[donmontalvo]

We just got a heads up to get Alertus packaged for deployment. We deployed it a few years ago at another large company.

Since the app is a GUI, and not a real background app, we had to bootstrap it using UID (not username).

/bin/launchctl bootstrap gui/$( stat -f %u ) /Library/LaunchAgents/com.domain.product.plist

We worked with the vendor on some other tweaks, like making sure the process is always running, and making sure it was properly nice'd.

The latest version is 2.9.31.1714 and supports 10.8 through 10.12.

Tossed up a third party product page:

https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/third-party-products/603/alertus-desktop

[jhuls]

Wish I knew of this a few days ago. I just rolled out that version yesterday after dealing with a few issues with it. The installer didn't seem to do well with ending the current running process so I had to implement my own and then on 10.9 their post install script only worked with 10.10 and up to start the process thus I had to create my own. I actually had a thread open here for the latter issue. https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/discussions/23617/shell-applescript-help-needed

I can't say their support has been very stellar. It took a week to hear back from them on a recent issue and from what I can tell there aren't release notes on the version updates. I'm also trying to find out if they have some method of notifying us when there are updates. I only knew of this one because the version we had deployed(2.9.30) was giving us a "Page content retrieved is empty" error. It took a week for them to get back to us to explain what the error even meant and that it was harmless. The new version in testing seemed to address it but then the day I received the email the old client no longer had the error. It had to do with connecting offsite(which we weren't aware it was doing) so they must have addressed the issue.