hi tom,
>> however, if i place an identical startup string in my OSX's StartupItem for
>> pgsql & reboot, pgsql does not start on boot.
>
> I was trying to reproduce this on my own machine, but couldn't get out
> of the starting gate. I put an executable shell script into
> "/System Folder/Startup Items", but I couldn't see any evidence that the
> system paid any attention to it at all. Exactly what are you doing to
> tell OSX to run a bit of shell script at boot time?
wrong location/folder name ... 'System Folder' is an OS9 construct
(you haven't installed OS9 and OSX on the same partition, now, have you? tsk,
tsk ... ;-) )
OSX userland startup scripts need to go into
/Library/StartupItems/SCRIPTNAME
(System startup scripts go in '/System/Library/StartupItems/SCRIPTNAME' but we
users are supposed to stay out o' there. BUT, you should always check to make
sure your userland script isn't conflicting with an Apple-installed flavor in
/System/...)
in the SCRIPTNAME dir you need two files:
(1) 'SCRIPTNAME', containing your script
(2) 'StartupParameters/.plist', a test or XML-formatted parameter file
perms/ownership should be:
chown -R root:wheel /Library/StartupItems/SCRIPTNAME
chmod 755 /Library/StartupItems/SCRIPTNAME
chmod 755 /Library/StartupItems/DarkMatter/SCRIPTNAME
chmod 644 /Library/StartupItems/SCRIPTNAME/StartupParameters.plist
fyi: here's an O'Reilly blurb with way more info than you want to know ...
<http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/10/21/startup.html>
HTH!
richard