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#1611 Privoxy [Mac} does not reliably restart on reboot
Privoxy v 3.0.21 on Mac 10.9 (13A603).
I don't reboot often. I shut my mac down for the Thanksgiving holiday, and upon restart when returning home, noticed that no web pages were loading. I had rebooted various times a few weeks ago (same version of privoxy and same OS version), without experiencing any problems. This time though, privoxy failed to load upon booting. Launchd messages from the console logs are as follows:
11/30/13 11:21:44.674 PM com.apple.launchd[1]: (org.ijbswa.privoxy[74]) getpwnam("_privoxy") failed
11/30/13 11:21:44.675 PM com.apple.launchd[1]: (org.ijbswa.privoxy[74]) Exited with code: 3
Issuing a launchctl command to unload and reload the launch agent successfully got privoxy started, as follows:
sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.ijbswa.privoxy.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.ijbswa.privoxy.plist
Obviously, it would be preferable to not have to do this whenever I reboot.
Any ideas?
Hi again cjpragman,
So did you yet completely uninstall (using the provided uninstall.command) and then reinstall from scratch?
The current belief on this issue is that the upgrade to 10.9 in some way breaks (or completely removes) the _privoxy user account upon which Privoxy depends for running securely (i.e. Not as root).
Cheers,
Ian
I have previously done the uninstall/reinstall you describe.
Hmmm, okay, that's disappointing.
It suggests that Mavericks places different restrictions on user accounts during startup than it does during normal operation, since the commands you're using to start it manually reference the exact same configuration used during boot.
Unless or until I can solve this problem the only reliable workaround is to fall back to using the old-style StartupItem. Frustratingly for you, my installation scripts delete that item since it's not the preferred method (not since OS X 10.3!). As such, I've attached the two necessary files (StartupParameters.plist & Privoxy) to this ticket for you. You'll need to create a folder named /Library/StartupItems/Privoxy and place them all in there. All the folders and files you create _must_ be given 755 permissions else it'll not work.
Kind regards,
Ian
StartupItem start script
StartupItem parameters file
Just a quick update.
Have rebooted a few times since thanksgiving, and privoxy auto-loaded as expected. Then today I rebooted and privoxy didn't load. Seems to be hit-or-miss kind of thing.
The error message in the log is the same as last time.
1/19/14 8:58:11.325 AM com.apple.launchd[1]: (org.ijbswa.privoxy[72]) getpwnam("_privoxy") failed
1/19/14 8:58:11.325 AM com.apple.launchd[1]: (org.ijbswa.privoxy[72]) Exited with code: 3
Was able to successfully re-load it using launchctl unload & load.
Is this still an issue with Privoxy 3.0.24?
This is a problem with Mavericks upgades rather than Privoxy per se. Since it is now very unlikely that any user with Privoxy installed will upgrade to Mavericks, and if they do the files supplied in this ticket can be used to correct the problem, the ticket will now be closed.
Ian