How to show logs in Terminal with autostart enabled OSX?

Support
1

Hi all,

I’m on OSX and I have Syncthing autostarting using the plist method as described in the docs.

http://docs.syncthing.net/users/autostart.html?highlight=autostart#mac-os-x

Sometimes I get sync errors and I want to just quickly look to see what files are causing the problems. So far I have been getting the debug logs by adding some commands to the plist (as suggested in the below link). The downfall is that I reboot the system to see the logs.

Can someone provide a step by step method on getting the logs to show up in Terminal? I’m a bit of a newbie, so please have patience :smile:

I see in the above thread that Syncthing can be started from Terminal to show the logs, but I couldnt get it to work.

This is what I tried.

  1. open terminal
  2. cd to folder with syncthing
  3. in terminal typed: syncthing -verbose I get this in terminal ‘-bash: syncthing: command not found’

What am I doing wrong?

2

It’s ./syncthing in the directory the binary is.

3

Thanks!

Now the only problem I get is this

FATAL: Cannot open database: resource temporarily unavailable - Is another copy of Syncthing already running?

I’ve tried to shutdown via the GUI and I get a ‘Shutdown is complete’ message but the FATAL error is still there. Any suggestions?

4

Well your shut down didnt work it seems, terminate it through the process manager and try again.

5

Nope. Cant kill the process either. It just keeps restarting after every forced quit :frowning:

6

So it’s the service daemon probably restarting it after you kill it.

You should do: sudo launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.syncthing.plist

then try killing it.

7

Sorry, I should have specified. I used the non-Homebrew method. So I just copied the .plist that came in the etc folder in the included binaries. I changed the user to my info and then copied that to launchdAgents folder.

I did try to use the:

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchAgents/se.nym.syncthing.plist

But I get this:

launchctl: Error unloading: se.nym.syncthing

I did:

sudo chown root <filename>

and

 sudo chmod 644 <filename>

To be able to run the launchctl commands.

This is what my plist looks like (minus the header):

<plist version="1.0">
	<dict>
		<key>Label</key>
		<string>se.nym.syncthing</string>
		<key>ProgramArguments</key>
		<array>
			<string>/Applications/Syncthing/syncthing</string>
		</array>
		<key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
		<dict>
			<key>HOME</key>
			<string>/Users/nori</string>
			<key>STNORESTART</key>
			<string>1</string>
		</dict>
		
		<key>KeepAlive</key>
		<true/>

		<key>LowPriorityIO</key>
		<true/>

		<key>ProcessType</key>
		<string>Background</string>
	</dict>
</plist>
8

Well the procedure for unloading the plist is the same, it’s just the path that is different.

9

Yes, I did change the path to my plist path. What I did to make sure the path was correct was I dragged the plist into Terminal.

But for some reason I get the error that it cannot unload. Terminal doesnt give any other explaination.

edit: I had to use the -w flag

sudo launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchAgents/se.nym.syncthing.plist

But killing the syncthing process in activity monitor still doesnt work. Always restarts. I have also noticed that shutting down via the GUI does nothing.

Well Syncthing is persistent. This is too much trouble. I can just stick with my old change the plist and reboot method.

Thanks for your help Audrius

10

LaunchControl http://www.soma-zone.com/LaunchControl/ is a fantastic GUI for launchd and lets you easily enable/disable items as well as load/unload.

11

Thanks so much for the suggestion on LaunchControl It worked like a charm :smiley:

12