Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Name

notifyd

Synopsis

notifyd [-no_restart] [-no_startup] [-shm_pages integer]

The notification server for the API described in the notify(3) manpage. (Use man 3 notify to display this page.) Using the API, processes may post notifications associated with arbitrary names, and other processes can register to be informed of such notification events. (A name should follow the convention used for Java classes: the reversed DNS domain name associated with the responsible organization, followed by one or more segments; e.g., com.apple.system.timezone.) notifyd sets up the shared memory used for the notify_register_check call, and directly answers notify_check requests for other notification methods (signal, Mach port, and file descriptor).

It also reads a configuration file, /etc/notify.conf. Each line begins with one of two keywords: reserve or monitor. The reserve keyword lays out access restrictions for portions of the namespace. The arguments are a name, a user and a group that “owns” the name, and a set of read and write permissions for the user, the group, and others, similar to those applied to files. For example, the following line:

reserve com.apple.system. 0 0 rwr-r-

states that any names starting with com.apple.system. are owned by UID 0 (root) and GID 0 (wheel), and that anyone can receive notifications for these names, but only root (the owner) can post notifications.

The monitor keyword takes a name and a filename as arguments. When the specified file is changed, a notification ...