OS X's com.prey.agent.plist slows system shutdowns (HS:plist)

[ghost]

Problem

According to a user,

After installing prey to my macbook (Mavericks 10.9.5) I have started experiencing slow shutdowns. Further investigation pointed to the following setting in /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.prey.agent.plist. There there is parameter that sets exit timeout to the value 20. If I remove the plist file I have normal shutdown times, back to 2 seconds as before, and if I put it back the delay re-occurs. What exactly is that for and why the need to slow the shut own? Can I safely remove that specific parameter or set it to some lower value?

The stable version was 1.3.4 at the time.

How it was detected

User report.

Suggested solution

Reduce the shutdown time, or confirm that the problem isn't caused by Prey.

References

• https://secure.helpscout.net/conversation/63272644/10986/

[tomas]

20 is the default ExitTimeout for all OSX daemons. From the original documentation:

ExitTimeOut <integer>
     The amount of time launchd waits before sending a SIGKILL signal. The default value is 20 seconds. The
     value zero is interpreted as infinity.

So, basically, something's preventing a clean shutdown which causes launchd to wait 20 seconds before killing the process by force. I suspect that this may be related to 19607b8 so I would suggest the user to upgrade to the latest version before modifying anything. Also, we should try to reproduce the error before accepting this as as a valid bug.

[ghost]

Version 1.3.6 fixed the issue. I'll you know in case I get anything new.

[tomas]

Bravo.