7

I'm trying to have launchd run a shell script when I join a new WiFi network. I've created this plist file (closely based on this SuperUser answer) at /Users/myname/Library/LaunchAgents/my.networkChangeListener.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" \
 "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>my.networkChangeListener</string>
  <key>LowPriorityIO</key>
  <true/>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
<string>/Users/myname/bin/networkChangeListener/onNetworkChange.sh</string>
  </array>
  <key>WatchPaths</key>
  <array>
    <string>/etc/resolv.conf</string>
    <string>/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist</string>
    <string>/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.plist</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

My user is the owner of the plist, and the group is "staff".

When I try to load the file by running launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/my.networkChangeListener.plist, I get an error saying "Invalid property list".

However, when I run plutil ~/Library/LaunchAgents/my.networkChangeListener.plist, it returns "OK"

What is the problem with my plist file? Is is something specific to launchd? I'm completely at a dead end for how to debug this.

Improve this question
0

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
11

The first few lines should be

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>

Your file (as well as the one in the linked answer) is missing the <plist version="1.0"> part.

Improve this answer
2
  • 1
    Thank you! That solved the problem. It does seem like something plutil should have caught … but then, it also seems like something I should have caught in the oodles of times I read over the code looking for mismatched tags.
    – LiberalArtist
    Commented Apr 16, 2015 at 4:51
  • 2
    Just as a hint: OS X comes with xmllint, which is part of the OpenSource libxml. If you just want to validate xml, you could try this: endor-3:~ garex$ xmllint /tmp/my.networkChangeListener.plist /tmp/my.networkChangeListener.plist:21: parser error : Extra content at the end of the document </plist> ^ That showed that your plist tag was closed but not opened...
    – Martin Allert
    Commented Apr 16, 2015 at 7:59
0

A totally blank plist looks like this: 

<?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/>
</plist>

I use PlistEdit Pro when having to do a lot of changes, as it is easy to make mistakes.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .