Odd Stuff in my '~/System/Library/StartupItems' folder –*please help

**eric halfabee** · May 9th, 2002, 11:17 PM

Hi

Not sure if this is odd or not.

Just went into my ~/System/Library/StartupItems folder and noticed some weird or not so weird if they are supposed to be there, but it appears that some of my apps /utilities are there, especially my Non standard Apple utils folder.

Here is a list of StartuItems folder:

Non standard utils*
Accounting
AirPort Admin Utility*
AirPort Setup Assistant*
Apple System Profiler*
AppleShare
Applet Launcher*
AppleTalk
AppServices
AuthServer
Cleanup
ColorSync Utility*
ConfigServer
Console*
CPU Monitor*
CrashReporter
Cron
DigitalColor Meter
Directory Setup
DirectoryServices
Disk Copy*
Disk Utility*
Disks
Display Calibrator*
Grab*
Installer*
IPServices
Java Web Start
Key Caps*
Keychain Access*
NetInfo Manager*
Network
Network Utility*
NetworkTime
NFS
Portmap
Print Center*
ProcessViewer*
RemoteDesktopAgent
SecurityServer
Sendmail
SSH
StuffIt Expander*
StuffIt Lite 6.5*
SystemLog
SystemTuning
Terminal*

Can anyone shed some light onto why these are there (the ones I'm talking about I have put an asterix next to them).

Much appreciated in advance.

eric

**lethe** · May 9th, 2002, 11:32 PM

first of all, you named the folder incorrectly. ~ is equivalent to your home directory. there should be no System subdirectory in your home directory.

now i will assume you meant to say /System/Library/StartupItems. in that directory should be a bunch of scripts for starting system services. mostly UNIX daemons. for example there are scripts for your ssh server and for the crond daemon. i don t understand why you have OSX apps like Network Utility in there. or terminal. it looks like all the contents of your /Applications/Utilities directory somehow got mixed in with your /System/Library/StartupItems. very fishy. this is what is in my /System/Library/StartupItems:

Code:

lethe% ls -l /System/Library/StartupItems/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Sep  7  2001 Accounting
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Sep  7  2001 Apache
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Sep  7  2001 AppServices
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Sep  7  2001 AppleShare
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Sep  7  2001 AppleTalk
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Sep  7  2001 AuthServer
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Sep  7  2001 Cleanup
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Sep  7  2001 ConfigServer
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Nov  7  2001 CrashReporter
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Sep  7  2001 Cron
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Sep  7  2001 DirectoryServices
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Sep  7  2001 Disks
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Sep  7  2001 IPServices
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Sep  7  2001 NFS
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Sep  7  2001 Network
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Sep  7  2001 NetworkTime
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Sep  7  2001 Portmap
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Jan  3  2002 Samba
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Apr  2 02:50 SSH
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Jan 15 09:55 SecurityServer
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Sep  7  2001 Sendmail
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Sep  7  2001 SystemLog
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  264 Sep  7  2001 SystemTuning

these scripts usually get executed when the system starts up (and before you login, unlike your startup items). a lot of them also send messages to the console that you can read while the system is starting up (under that blue bar)

**eric halfabee** · May 9th, 2002, 11:52 PM

Yes I do mean /System/Library/StartupItems. Not used to this UNIX way.

Anyway I thought I should add, that these utilities and folders are also in their correct place where I put them and these seem to be duplicates.

Now if I want to try and remove them I should use the Terminal and do the sudo rm thing, but I'm not sure exactly how to do this.

Could you show me what to do?

Also I've just done the Terminal list and I also notice that my SSH is owned by Admin, is this good?

drwxr-xr-x 5 root admin 264 Apr 2 19:50 SSH

Thanx again

**lethe** · May 10th, 2002, 01:07 AM

your post indicates not that SSH is owned by admin, but that it is owned by root, but is in the admin group. i m not sure why this should be like that, i think yours should look like mine (ie owned by root, in group wheel).

i don t think it is going to be fatal if it belongs to the wrong group. it might be a little lax with security, if you have people in admin who aren t in wheel. anyway if you want to change it, use this:

Code:

% sudo chgrp whell /System/Library/StartupItems/SSH

could you post the entire results of what you get with ls -l /System/Library/StartupItems/ ? i still don t understand why those other apps should be in here. it is really only for system services that get started at boot time. i am sure that terminal.app is not one of these. this will help me to advise you on how to delete these if you need to. maybe someone else can shed some light on how these got here?

if you can post the results of ls -l, please enclose it in code tags? ls -l will dump lots of stuff that will be hard to read after copying and pasting if you do not. here s how

**lethe** · May 10th, 2002, 11:42 AM

oops. sorry for the typo. good eye testuser.

ok so eric, i guess the answer is i have no idea why you have those weird things in that folder, but you should get rid of them. i just want to be sure that you also have these apps in their proper place so you don t lose them.

another concern i have: are these files that we are looking at, or are they .app bundles? because your listing shows them as executables, without the entire .app bundle, eg, from App.app/Contents/MacOS/App. that is the only place i know of that has an executable file. i don t know how those got there, but i guess its like testuser said. you monkeyed somethign up.

anyway, it is my opinion that testusers suggestion will not work for this reason. there are no .app direcotries, only the included executable files.

let me see... what would be a quick way to delete al those? i think some combo of find and xargs. but i don t really know how to use that... suggestions?

ls -l | grep -v '^d' will show you all non directories. i think you should have only directories in the StartupItems folder. so delete all these.

**nkuvu** · May 10th, 2002, 11:51 AM

Not that I know any different, but I love the combination of "I think" and "delete".

lethe said:
i think you should have only directories in the StartupItems folder. so delete all these.

**lethe** · May 10th, 2002, 12:32 PM

sorry about the ambiguity tortoise. how about this testuser, to delete those files:

Code:

find /System/Library/StartupItems -type f -ok rm {} \;

**eric halfabee** · May 11th, 2002, 04:34 PM

Firstly thanks for your replies, who needs expensive helpdesks when we have the whole world to help.

Anyway, I'm not sure how those files or packages got there, I cannot check at the moment as I'm at home typing this on my antiquated PowerCenter 150 (its Sunday morning, having coffee and toast and trying to keep my 2 year old from the keyboard). As for the Terminal I hardly go there unless I have specific instructions how to, but that not to say I didn't accidently do something. I also had the system lock up on me last week, not suer if this did anything.

I will try your suggestions for removing the files/folders. Just thinking about it they seem like these bundles you mention as I believe that if they were actuall apps would they fire up when I start-up, which they don't (sorry, I should have mentioned this before).

I will also post my entire ls file as requested by lethe when I get back to work on Monday.

Cheers for now.

eric