Daemon Lifecycle

glomeris daemon <install|uninstall|status|run> manages an optional background poller via macOS’s launchd, implemented in src/platform/macos/launchd.rs.

User-level, not root

Everything here runs at the per-user level: the plist is written to ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.glomeris.monitor.plist, and it is loaded with plain launchctl load/unload (gui/<uid> session semantics). Nothing writes to a system-level LaunchDaemons location, and no root/sudo access is required for any of these commands.

glomeris daemon install [--force]

Writes a plist that runs <program_path> daemon run every 60 seconds (StartInterval) by default, with RunAtLoad set, and stdout/stderr redirected to ~/Library/Logs/Glomeris/monitor.log/.err.log. Then runs launchctl load -w <plist_path>. If launchctl fails, the plist file is left in place (so status/a manual retry can still see it) — only the final launchctl result is treated as a hard failure.

What this owns, preserves, and refuses to clobber (HORO-1021): the plist at ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.glomeris.monitor.plist is a wholly Glomeris-owned artifact — no other tool reads or writes it. Even so, install never silently discards a hand-edited value:

• Idempotent. Re-running install against an already-up-to-date plist (matching a fresh default install) writes nothing.
• Preserves a hand-edited StartInterval. If you’ve changed the poll interval by hand, re-running install keeps your value — only the program path is refreshed (the actual point of reinstalling after rebuilding/moving the binary).
• Refuses any other unrecognized customization without --force. If the on-disk plist has been changed in a way this tool doesn’t manage (a hand-added key, a flipped RunAtLoad, etc.), install makes zero changes and exits with status 2, explaining the refusal. Pass --force to overwrite anyway — a backup of the current file is taken first, at <plist_path>.plist.bak.
• Atomic, verified writes. Every real write goes to a temp file in the same directory, is renamed into place, and is read back and compared before install reports success — a crash or concurrent install mid-write can’t leave a corrupt/partial plist.
• Aborts on concurrent modification. If the plist changes on disk between install’s read and its write (e.g. two daemon installs racing), the later write aborts with zero mutation of the live plist and exit status 2 rather than risk clobbering the concurrent change — rerun to retry. This is checked twice: once before anything is written, and again right before the live plist itself is overwritten (after the backup copy has been taken) — narrowing the window where a concurrent writer could land and be silently clobbered down to the instant between that second check and the write itself. That last sliver can’t be closed without holding a lock across the whole read-check-write section, which is out of scope here. If the second check is the one that catches a race, a .plist.bak backup of the pre-race content may already be on disk; that stray backup is harmless (never the concurrent writer’s data) and is not treated as a mutation of the live plist for the purposes of this guarantee.

glomeris daemon uninstall

Runs launchctl unload -w <plist_path> (best-effort — an already-unloaded agent reporting an error from launchctl is not treated as fatal here), backs up the current plist to <plist_path>.plist.bak, then removes the plist file if present. Idempotent — uninstalling an already-missing plist is not an error.

glomeris daemon status

Prints whether the plist file exists, its path, and whether launchctl list <label> currently reports the job loaded. This never errors: an unreachable launchctl (e.g. a non-macOS or sandboxed CI environment) is reported as loaded: false, not surfaced as a failure.

glomeris daemon run

Runs the polling loop in the foreground — this is the exact command the installed launchd agent invokes on its own schedule. It watches /, using ThresholdConfig::default() (see Pressure Model), the real macOS statvfs-backed FsStat, and the real osascript-backed notifier, appending confirmed pressure transitions to ~/Library/Application Support/Glomeris/history.tsv.

Known CI limitation

Only plist generation and path/file logic are unit tested in this repository’s CI. Actually asking launchd to load/run the agent needs a real macOS user session and is not exercised by cargo test.