How do I restart, say for example my httpd or afpd, running any Mac OS X >= 10.5 (Leopard-), without having to use the GUI and go to System Preferences -> Sharing and unchecking/checking "Web Sharing"?
I'm looking for the canonical equivalent to Debian's invoke-rc.d apache2 restart.
EDIT: The question is about launchd controlled services in general, not specifically Apache (-which was simply an example).
launchctl(8) is your friend. Just keep in mind that some of the services (sshd for example) are disabled in the configuration file so you will need to use the -w switch when loading them. Here is an example - sshd:
$ sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist
You can stop the service using the unload subcommand.
$ sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist
To list the services, as you might have already guessed use the 'list' subcommand ;)
To restart a service, you can use the launchctl kickstart command, together with the -k option. For example, to restart apache, you can use
sudo launchctl kickstart -k system/org.apache.httpd
This information is from the launchctl manual page:
kickstart [-kp] service-target Instructs launchd to run the specified service immediately, regardless of its configured launch conditions.-k If the service is already running, kill the running instance before restarting the service. [...]
You could simply do
sudo launchctl stop com.openssh.sshd
If you don't known the full service name, you can do
sudo launchctl list
If you still don't find the service you expected, try to run without the root identity:
launchctl list
And you don't need to unload and load service.
You are looking for launchctl.
SYNOPSIS
launchctl [subcommand [arguments ...]]
DESCRIPTION
launchctl interfaces with launchd to load, unload daemons/agents and gen-
erally control launchd. launchctl supports taking subcommands on the
command line, interactively or even redirected from standard input.
These commands can be stored in $HOME/.launchd.conf or /etc/launchd.conf
to be read at the time launchd starts.
Just in case if you are looking for launchctl reload, you can define shell function in your ~/.bashrc/.zshrc as I did:
function lctl {
COMMAND=$1
PLIST_FILE=$2
if [ "$COMMAND" = "reload" ] && [ -n "$PLIST_FILE" ]
then
echo "reloading ${PLIST_FILE}.."
launchctl unload ${PLIST_FILE}
launchctl load ${PLIST_FILE}
else
echo "either command not specified or plist file is not defined"
fi
}
Command execution looks like -> lctl reload <your-plist-name>.plist
For restarting, I think the easiest way is to kill the process. Assume you have configured keepalive, which most daemon processes do. pkill apache2 will do. Then the process will start again by itself.
There is a small & useful app for this named Lingon. Lingon freeware edition is here sometimes restarting a service can be tricky.
syslog -w
reading helps though.
