Yosemite, SuperServer, and StartupItems

There seems to be a small problem with Firebird on Yosemite (OSX 10.10), it looks like Apple have finally deprecated StartupItems, and currently SuperServer uses this to start itself on reboot.

Apple state:
"Startup Items
Deprecation Note: Startup items are a deprecated technology. Launching of daemons through this process may be removed or eliminated in a future release of OS X."

Which is obviously what has happened.

This is followed by

"Unless your software requires compatibility with OS X v10.3 or earlier, use the launchd facility instead."

Which is currently what Classic does.


If you install Firebird after upgrading to Yosemite, you can start the server manually by simply using

/Library/StartupItems/Firebird/Firebird start

However if Firebird was already installed, it looks as if the StartupItems folder is removed during the upgrade, but you should be able to start the server using the following....

/Library/Frameworks/Firebird.framework/Resources/bin/fbguard -daemon -forever

But if you want Firebird SuperServer to start automatically on reboot you could use the following org.firebird.gds.plist file in /Library/LaunchDaemons

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>Label</key> <string>org.firebird.gds</string> <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>/Library/Frameworks/Firebird.framework/Resources/bin/fbguard</string> <string>-daemon</string> <string>-forever</string> </array> <key>RunAtLoad</key> <true> </true></dict> </plist>

and the command

launchctl load org.firebird.gds.plist

should now start Firebird immediately and also on reboot.

Update 2nd July 2015

I got an email from David Nock suggesting that the following plist would do a better job at managing SuperServer on Yosemite (10.10). Some brief tests suggest that he is right. I will be committing the following for 2.5.5, but I am documenting this here in case anybody wants to use this.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <plist version="1.0"> <dict> <key>Label</key> <string>org.firebird.gds</string> <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>/Library/Frameworks/Firebird.framework/Resources/bin/fbguard</string> </array> <key>RunAtLoad</key> <true/> <key>KeepAlive</key> <true/> </dict> </plist>