Stopping Dovecot using launchctl

Question

I have Dovecot running as a daemon via a launchd plist. It runs fine but doesn't stop if I run launchctl stop nor if I unload the plist so I end up using doveadm stop. Is there a key or command I add to the plist to tell it how to stop a service? I've checked the man pages for launchd.plist and launchctl but can't find anything like it.

This is the relevant part of the 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">
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>local.dovecot</string>
<!-- 
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <false/>
 -->
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
      <string>/opt/pkg/sbin/dovecot</string>
<!--       <string>-F</string> -->
    </array>
    <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
    <string>/Library/Logs/Dovecot/stdout.log</string>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/Library/Logs/Dovecot/stderr.log</string>
  </dict>
</plist>

There's no KeepAlive or anything like that, it's a very simple plist.

Any help with this will be much appreciated.

Answer 1

The trouble goes away if I uncomment the -F switch (which I commented while I was trying to get some other part of the set up to work). The -F switch runs Dovecot in the foreground and does not daemonize.

From this answer on SuperUser:

Launchd expects the programs it launches not to daemonize themselves; if they do, launchd detects it as the program exiting, and cleans up all subprocesses (i.e. kills the now-daemonized program).

In this case it didn't kill the program (as I wouldn't expected if the switch was the wrong one), it just relinquished control so it wouldn't/couldn't shut it down.

Note to self, try the obvious thing, your assumptions may be wrong.