codesigning, the macports user (and other users added by MacPorts) and diskspace (IconServicesAgent) [was Re: lldb ...]

[René J.V. Bertin]

On Sunday September 18 2016 17:24:55 Jeremy Huddleston Sequoia wrote:

> That all looks as expected for someone on OS X 10.9.  launchd2 in 10.10+ did away with per-user launchd.  All domains are managed by the same process.

Still, why would a background user without even an interactive shell be running an IconServicesAgent?
> 
> That's pretty large.  I'm a bit surprised by that.
> 
> My macports user's disk usage is about 90 MB, mostly for its pch cache.

That fits with the size I'm seeing for root and _securityagent. 900Mb is about what I see for users who have logged in at some point.

> > Is it possible to create users with UID<500 despite those numbers being "reserved by Apple"?
> 
> Yes, of course it's possible.  Don't.  There's nothing special about the UID in this case that has anything to do with what you're seeing.

So what does make the difference?


> > %>  sudo afsctool -cfvv -8 -J4 /var/folders/*/*/C/com.apple.IconServices
> 
> What is -J4?  I don't see that option mentioned, and afsctool seems to bawk at it.

That's an option from my parallel version:
https://github.com/RJVB/afsctool

I think I'll have to set up a cron task or similar that runs the afsctool command with an appropriate frequency. Since the run from this morning only my own icon cache has increased to about 250Mb; still 1/4 or what it was before compressing.

> On Sunday September 18 2016 20:42:53 Brandon Allbery wrote:
> > > Some port somewhere likely builds the icon cache while building or
> > > "installing" (destrooting) since it "knows" that it would only be built
> > > by
> > > the person intending to use it and that nobody uses packaging on OS X.
> > > :/
> > 
> > ...or maybe some tool invoked during build. The former could be mitigated;
> > the latter may be harder.

Possibly a tool, but what could have that effect? AFAIK the icon cache is chiefly used by the Finder, so anything that leverages the Finder might cause an icon cache to be populated.

But come to think of it that cannot be my case; the non-privileged build phases are run under my own ID on my system.

I'm calling it a night for now ...

R.