• Mac OS X,  Xsan

    Mac OS X: Enable and Disable Spotlight

    To Disable Spotlight for Mac OS X you can stop the Spotlight processes from being invoked by launchd.  To do so use the following commands: launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Spotlight.plist launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist To re-enable it you would simply load up your launchd processes again like so: launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Spotlight.plist launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security

    Mac OS X: Loading and Unloading with launchd

    In Mac OS X you can use cron to schedule tasks but you can also use launchd.  To use launchd to load or unload an agent where you’ve setup a task use the launchctl command.  Here we will use launchctl to manually start a process given that we defined a plist called /Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.OpenProgram.plist (where program is maybe the name of some program you want to fire up): launchctl load Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.OpenProgram.plist Your application should fire up now.  Do not quit it for ten seconds. Wait about 15, then quit it. Notice it start up again. This is because it is a launchAgent and will restart any time it is closed.  Now…