Can't get launchd to work at Startup/Shutdown on OS X Lion

Question

I followed some online guides trying to get some headless VMs to start/suspend automatically at boot/shutdown on my Mac. I can't get it to work at all. This is my first time trying to get script runs on Startup/Shutdown, so it could be that I'm just missing something very basic and if that's the case I apologize.

These are the steps I followed:

• Created a directory /Library/StartupItems/HeadlessVM

• Created two files within that directory:

  -rwxr--r--  1 root  wheel  242 Feb 19 19:05 HeadlessVM
  -rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  188 Feb 20 12:42 StartupParameters.plist
  

  Contents for HeadlessVM

  $ cat HeadlessVM
  #!/bin/sh
  
  . /etc/rc.common
  
  StartService () 
  {
      ConsoleMessage "Starting HeadlessVM"
      /usr/local/bin/runvmheadless
  }
  
  StopService () 
  {
      ConsoleMessage "Suspending HeadlessVM"
      /usr/local/bin/suspendvmheadless
  }
  
  RunService "$1"
  

  Contents for StartupParameters.plist

  $ cat StartupParameters.plist
  {
    Description     = "Runs/Suspends Virtual Machine Headless on OS X Startup/Shutdown";
    Provides        = ("HeadlessVM");
    Uses            = ("Disks");
    OrderPreference = ("Late");
  }
  

• Created my script files, that will perform both actions:

    -rwxr-xr-x@ 1 xxxxxxx  admin  164 Feb 19 01:06 runvmheadless
    -rwxr-xr-x@ 1 xxxxxxx  admin  160 Feb 19 01:19 suspendvmheadless
  

  Contents for runvmheadless

  $ cat runvmheadless
  #!/bin/bash
  "/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmrun" -T fusion start "/Volumes/Archive/Virtual Machines/vm.vmwarevm/vm.vmx" nogui
  

  Contents for suspendvmheadless

  $ cat suspendvmheadless
  #!/bin/bash
  "/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmrun" -T fusion suspend "/Volumes/StaticData/Virtual Machines/vm.vmwarevm/vm.vmx"
  

• My troubleshooting so far:

  • If I run the scripts from the terminal, they work as intended.
  • If I run sudo /sbin/SystemStarter (start or stop) "HeadlessVM" it also works.

  • On console I only see the following when I reboot, no clue on what's wrong tho.

    2/20/12 12:11:09.128 PM SystemStarter: Runs/Suspends Virtual Machine Headless on OS X Startup/Shutdown (100) did not complete successfully

Appreciate any help, Thank you.

Answer 1

I found what was wrong. The code above is fine, the problem is that my scripts are trying to get data from an encrypted secondary disk which was not available at boot time.

I used this in order to bypass this problem:https://github.com/jridgewell/Unlock

Thanks