Re: macports-users Digest, Vol 170, Issue 19
Appologies for the stupid Subject. I went away from a digest for mythtv (so you just reply to a thread) and the rot siezed my brain James
Re: Catalina xcode-select --install and MacPorts installation
Thanks. Maybe there is something about the mobile device management setup my employer uses that changes how the installations work. On 10/29/20, 03:44, "Ryan Schmidt" wrote: On Oct 28, 2020, at 02:31, Fielding, Eric J (US 329A) wrote: > I just upgraded my MacBook to Catalina 10.15.7 from 10.14.6 and I installed the latest Xcode 12.1. I started Xcode and agreed for it to install required components. When I tried to run “xcode-select –install” it asked me to agree to the license for the command-line tools and tried to install but then said “Can’t install the software because it is not currently available from the Software Update server.” I went to the Software Update control panel and it said that it had an update for my command-line tools, and I told it to go ahead and update them. After a while, it said that the command-line tools are no longer required or something like that. > > I decided to go ahead and try to install MacPorts with the Catalina MacPorts installer and it showed me the license, asked about the installation type and destination, but then when it got to the install step it says “Waiting for other installations to complete”. I don’t think I have any other installations still going on. Wait, after twenty minutes, it now says it is “running package scripts” and then finished. I guess it was installing something after all. > > Maybe the Xcode installation instructions need an update for Catalina? > As far as I know, the installation instructions are correct, and your experience is unique and I cannot explain it.
Re: Why is Macports doing this?
On 29 Oct 2020, at 8:41, bunk3m wrote: I've been using Little Snitch for some time and Macports for much longer. In the past few months I started getting a notice that the user macports is trying to run trustd. Rather: the OS is running a trustd instance as the macports user. Apple does not offer easily found documentation on why or when any particular user gets a trustd instance but if you look, you'll find at least a main daemon running as root and one agent instance for each logged in user, and unless you've disabled related facilities, one agent instance each for _locationd and _spotlight. It appears that these agents are started by the daemon whenever a process running as the particular user attempts to validate a certificate using OS facilities. If you look at all of the processes on a running Mac, you will find a number of similar cases: secd, lsd, cprefsd, distnoted, etc. Why would macports be running a process every morning to connect to Apple? I thought Macports only ran when you invoked it from the command line. The 'port' process only runs when invoked and for any modifications of the system it must be run as 'root' via sudo. It uses the 'macports' user id for some tasks that should not be run as root or the logged-in human user. When that is done and certain OS facilities are used, the system spawns agent instances of relevant daemons like trustd so that the processes running as macports can talk to the master daemons in a safe and structured way specific to the context of the macports user. Those agent instances don't exit automatically because once used, they are extremely cheap to leave running: a few KB of memory and almost no CPU or I/O until used again. The "almost" in the case of trustd is that the agent instances apparently do some housekeeping on a daily basis that includes contacting the Apple OCSP (Online Certificate Status Protocol) server. My guess is that this is cache maintenance of some sort. There is no feasible way for MacPorts to prevent this behavior. Short of doing certificate validation internally, which would risk diverging from how the OS does it via trustd, there is no way at all. I hope the screenshot will come through that shows the Little Snitch notice. It did. It shows a trustd process whose binary (/usr/libexec/trustd) is signed by Apple (and which is protected by SIP on modern systems) running *as* macports, NOT any part of MacPorts running. I'm a bit surprised that LS does not recognize this as something it should pass without alerting. -- Bill Cole b...@scconsult.com or billc...@apache.org (AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses) Not Currently Available For Hire
Re: Catalina xcode-select --install and MacPorts installation
On Oct 28, 2020, at 02:31, Fielding, Eric J (US 329A) wrote: > I just upgraded my MacBook to Catalina 10.15.7 from 10.14.6 and I installed > the latest Xcode 12.1. I started Xcode and agreed for it to install required > components. When I tried to run “xcode-select –install” it asked me to agree > to the license for the command-line tools and tried to install but then said > “Can’t install the software because it is not currently available from the > Software Update server.” I went to the Software Update control panel and it > said that it had an update for my command-line tools, and I told it to go > ahead and update them. After a while, it said that the command-line tools are > no longer required or something like that. > > I decided to go ahead and try to install MacPorts with the Catalina MacPorts > installer and it showed me the license, asked about the installation type and > destination, but then when it got to the install step it says “Waiting for > other installations to complete”. I don’t think I have any other > installations still going on. Wait, after twenty minutes, it now says it is > “running package scripts” and then finished. I guess it was installing > something after all. > > Maybe the Xcode installation instructions need an update for Catalina? > As far as I know, the installation instructions are correct, and your experience is unique and I cannot explain it.
