Error launching backend on fresh install under OS X

[brettbode]

Under the latest v1.2.2 version on OS X you may still see an error when launching the app that the backend could not be started. It looks like the backend is being blocked until it is manually approved. Try double clicking the gamessqd command line binary and then approving it to launch. Doing the approval once should allow the app to launch it after that.

The solution is probably to package the whole thing into an installer mpkg.

[gutow]

This only works for a user that has administrator access and can write to the directory where gamess is installed. I have not yet tried making an install for each user. Although I did try copying gamessqd into the users .gamessqd directory. Maybe I need everything?

[gutow]

Simply does not work for a user without admin priv. The gamessqd can be launched manually by the user. However, it never communicates with the GamessQ gui. I have tried an install of all of GAMESS and GamessQ in a directory owned by the user.

[brettbode]

Thanks for the information. I do not regularly test on a "standard" account so will need to add that step. I understand the tightening up of security, but I do have to say Apple has made it hard to do what used to be fairly simple... I will have to rethink the strategy for the backend binary.

[gutow]

@brettbode, you are welcome.

Unfortunately, further testing provides more mystery. You will definitely need to test on a plain vanilla MacOS install. I may be fighting something my IT division has done with the accounts. A temporary standard Apple admin account on the lab computers I use with my students did not work either. Only my admin account associated with my user name for our IT network worked completely.

A temporary fix for the issue of gamessqd not launching was to create an Automator application that launches gamessqd before launching gamessq.

I hope these random clues are helpful.

[gutow]

Here is what worked for the setup in my classroom. The basic requirements are that student (non-administrator accounts) could use the software. Two problems we encountered were that they could not provide gate-keeper permission for the backend to launch and if one student logged out and another logged in they could not launch the backend. The gate-keeper permission issue was addressed with this short script run at installation time:

#!/bin/sh

sudo spctl --add "/Applications/gamess/GamessQ.app"
sudo spctl --add "/Applications/gamess/gamessqd"

exit 0

The issue of not being able to launch after switching users is due to the lag in garbage cleanup by MacOS. This was solved by a logout script assigned to all accounts that deleted the socket file located at /tmp/gamessq. Because the previous student account created the socket the next student account could not delete it when creating a new socket.

We also did set explicit paths for SCR, USERSCR and GMSPATH in the rungms script.

I hope this is useful.