Granting Permission to a MacOS launchd Daemon

[JPyke3]

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone had any luck running kanata as a MacOS Launchd service. For some reason it seems that launchd doesn't have the permission to run kanata correctly.

I have the folowing plist file in /Library/LaunchDaemons/:

<?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>KeepAlive</key>
        <dict>
                <key>Crashed</key>
                <true/>
                <key>SuccessfulExit</key>
                <false/>
        </dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>org.nixos.kanata</string>
        <key>Nice</key>
        <integer>-30</integer>
        <key>ProcessType</key>
        <string>Interactive</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>/bin/sh</string>
                <string>-c</string>
                <string>exec /nix/store/mvzbn87vjszmj2f7g52a21gwd207k9ri-kanata-bin-1.6.1/bin/kanata --cfg /etc/keyboard.kbd</string>
        </array>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
        <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
        <string>/var/log/kanata.err.log</string>
        <key>StandardOutPath</key>
        <string>/var/log/kanata.out.log</string>
</dict>
</plist>

However, the logs produce the following errors:

Press enter to exit
Error: failed to open keyboard device(s): Couldn't register any device
libc++abi: terminating
IOHIDDeviceOpen error: (iokit/common) not permitted
2024-05-07T10:49:56.581771+10:00 [ERROR] failed to open keyboard device(s): Couldn't register any device


Press enter to exit
Error: failed to open keyboard device(s): Couldn't register any device
libc++abi: terminating

And this is the output of the service:

...
2024-05-07T10:28:40.282786+10:00 [INFO] entering the processing loop
2024-05-07T10:28:40.283506+10:00 [INFO] entering the event loop
2024-05-07T10:28:40.283789+10:00 [INFO] Init: catching only releases and sending immediately
2024-05-07T10:46:31.505111+10:00 [INFO] kanata v1.6.1 starting
2024-05-07T10:46:31.505341+10:00 [INFO] process unmapped keys: true
2024-05-07T10:46:31.505386+10:00 [INFO] NOTE: kanata was compiled to never allow cmd
2024-05-07T10:46:31.50555+10:00 [INFO] config file is valid
2024-05-07T10:46:31.505561+10:00 [INFO] Sleeping for 2s. Please release all keys and don't press additional ones. Run kanata with --help to see how understand more and how to disable this sleep.
2024-05-07T10:46:33.51082+10:00 [INFO] entering the processing loop
2024-05-07T10:46:33.511255+10:00 [INFO] entering the event loop
2024-05-07T10:46:33.511413+10:00 [INFO] Init: catching only releases and sending immediately
2024-05-07T10:49:54.565336+10:00 [INFO] kanata v1.6.1 starting
2024-05-07T10:49:54.565833+10:00 [INFO] process unmapped keys: true
2024-05-07T10:49:54.565924+10:00 [INFO] NOTE: kanata was compiled to never allow cmd
2024-05-07T10:49:54.566247+10:00 [INFO] config file is valid
2024-05-07T10:49:54.566272+10:00 [INFO] Sleeping for 2s. Please release all keys and don't press additional ones. Run kanata with --help to see how understand more and how to disable this sleep.
2024-05-07T10:49:56.570074+10:00 [INFO] entering the processing loop
2024-05-07T10:49:56.570211+10:00 [INFO] entering the event loop
2024-05-07T10:49:56.570238+10:00 [INFO] Init: catching only releases and sending immediately

Notably, I have kanata installed via nix but I can't see that making any huge difference as the kanata binary works just fine if I run a sudo /nix/store/mvzbn87vjszmj2f7g52a21gwd207k9ri-kanata-bin-1.6.1/bin/kanata --cfg /etc/keybaord.kbd directly. But for those interested you can find my configuration here. I did find this repo: https://github.com/DivitMittal/kanata-service. But my plist seems so similiar that I can't see why my version wouldn't be working?

Any advice is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[JPyke3]

Of course it's always the way that I will post and somewhat quickly find the solution, and it was a Nix problem, whoops!

For those interested, I was creating a root agent instead of a user agent. A corrected config can be found here. Basically it means I need to use launchd.user.agents.kanata instead of launchd.agents.kanata.