What are the best methods for running the agent on macOS?

[henrygd]

Hello all,

I have very little experience with MacOS, so I don't know what to tell people when they ask for help.

I'm hoping I can get some tips and feedback from anyone here who is running the agent successfully.

Are you using launchd? Docker? Detached tmux session?

I would like to create a little guide with recommended approaches and examples.

Thanks!

[jianlongliu]

我也是遇到这个问题, 没几天用launchd重启服务临时解决
I also encountered this issue. Restarting the service with launchd temporarily resolved it.

[Zesty0wl]

I'm seeing this as well across multiple Macs. Intel and Apple Silicon. It's being throttled:

Connection removed: IOHIDEventSystemConnection uuid:7120D30C-0611-47DF-B2C6-71A0E15739A6 pid:34263 process:beszel-agent type:Rate Controlled entitlements:0x0 caller:beszel-agent: beszel-agent + 474444 attributes:(null) state:0x1 events:0 mask:0x0 dropped:0 dropStatus:0 droppedMask:0x0 lastDroppedTime:NONE

The log entry indicates that a connection associated with the beszel-agent process was removed by the macOS Input/Output HID Event System. The message suggests that the beszel-agent is making a large number of requests to the IOHID system, which has triggered rate-limiting or throttling mechanisms.

Here's an example from fs_usage. You can see that the agent is making a lot of read, write, and close operations in quick succession which is probably the root cause. We probably need a sleep statement in a loop somewhere.

14:05:16.144433 read F=5 B=0x34
14:05:16.144505 read F=5 [ 35]
14:05:16.144699 write F=5 B=0x34
14:05:16.145519 read F=5 B=0x34
14:05:16.145527 read F=5 [ 35]
14:05:16.145564 write F=5 B=0x24
14:05:16.145743 statfs64
14:05:16.146308 read F=5 B=0x24
14:05:16.146315 read F=5 [ 35]
14:05:16.146911 stat64 [ 2]
14:05:16.146915 stat64 [ 2]
14:05:16.146971 stat64
14:05:16.147221 open F=6 (R__________X)
14:05:16.147227 fstat64 F=6
14:05:16.147230 fcntl F=6
14:05:16.147233 fcntl F=6
14:05:16.147238 fcntl F=6
14:05:16.147239 fcntl F=6
14:05:16.147252 fcntl F=7
14:05:16.147253 fcntl F=8
14:05:16.147253 fcntl F=7
14:05:16.147254 fcntl F=7
14:05:16.147257 fcntl F=8
14:05:16.147258 fcntl F=8
14:05:16.147268 fcntl F=8
14:05:16.147268 fcntl F=8
14:05:16.147269 fcntl F=8
14:05:16.147276 fcntl F=9
14:05:16.147276 fcntl F=10
14:05:16.148919 close F=10
14:05:16.150101 read F=9 B=0x0
14:05:16.150158 close F=9
14:05:16.150397 close F=6
14:05:16.150406 close F=8
14:05:16.150481 read F=7 [ 35]
14:05:16.156875 read F=7 B=0x200
14:05:16.156900 read F=7 B=0x200
14:05:16.156906 read F=7 B=0x400
14:05:16.156919 read F=7 B=0x800
14:05:16.156921 read F=7 B=0x629
14:05:16.156922 read F=7 [ 35]
14:05:16.157140 read F=7 B=0x0
14:05:16.157151 close F=7
14:05:16.245016 socket F=6 <AF_UNIX, SOCK_STREAM, 0x0>
14:05:16.245027 fcntl F=6
14:05:16.245030 fcntl F=6
14:05:16.245036 fcntl F=6
14:05:16.245137 connect F=6 [ 2]
14:05:16.245292 close F=6
14:05:16.245534 write F=5 B=0x334
14:05:16.245564 write F=5 B=0x34
14:05:16.245575 write F=5 B=0x24
14:05:16.246843 read F=5 B=0x24
14:05:16.246873 read F=5 [ 35]

[Zesty0wl]

Actually, I took a chance and ran the agent with a nice 10 value, which seems to have been enough to place 'nice'.

To use this...

Download beszel agent

curl -sL "https://github.com/henrygd/beszel/releases/latest/download/beszel-agent_$(uname -s)_$(uname -m | sed -e 's/x86_64/amd64/' -e 's/armv6l/arm/' -e 's/armv7l/arm/' -e 's/aarch64/arm64/').tar.gz" | tar -xz -O beszel-agent | tee ./beszel-agent >/dev/null && chmod +x beszel-agent

Copy to /usr/local/bin

sudo cp beszel-agent /usr/local/bin

Create a LaunchDaemon

sudo nano /Library/LaunchDaemon/com.beszel.agent.plist

Edit the following, replacing the port and key as required

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.beszel.agent</string>

    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/bin/bash</string>
        <string>-c</string>
        <string>PORT=45876 KEY="ssh-ed25519 XXXXXX" /usr/local/bin/beszel-agent</string>
    </array>

    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>

    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <dict>
        <!-- Prevent excessive restarts -->
        <key>SuccessfulExit</key>
        <false/>
        <key>ThrottleInterval</key>
        <integer>60</integer> <!-- Minimum 60 seconds between restarts -->
    </dict>

    <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
    <string>/var/log/beszel-agent.err</string>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/var/log/beszel-agent.log</string>

    <!-- Lower the agent's process priority -->
    <key>Nice</key>
    <integer>10</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

Load the LaunchDaemon

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemon/com.beszel.agent.plist

Test if it's running

pgrep -l beszel-agent
38277 beszel-agent

[Zesty0wl]

If I get 5 minutes I might take a look at the agent code too. My guess is that we just need a slight delay in the loop where we get sensor data. That's usually enough to get macOS to stop getting over excited.

[henrygd]

We're using gopsutil's sensors package to get the sensor data:

https://github.com/shirou/gopsutil/blob/master/sensors/sensors_darwin_arm64.go

I also wonder if this could be caused by purego / cross compilation. Maybe an agent compiled natively on macos would not have this issue.

[luxiangzh]

@henrygd Hi! I'm wondering if there're any plan to add a full binary install process for mac? I've tried docker, but the data returned is all off due to the runtime environment. A workable install and run process seems to have been explored here, but I'm concerned that it will not be fully compatible with the official methods/tutorials provided later on.

[luxiangzh]

Actually, I took a chance and ran the agent with a nice 10 value, which seems to have been enough to place 'nice'.

To use this...

Download beszel agent

curl -sL "https://github.com/henrygd/beszel/releases/latest/download/beszel-agent_$(uname -s)_$(uname -m | sed -e 's/x86_64/amd64/' -e 's/armv6l/arm/' -e 's/armv7l/arm/' -e 's/aarch64/arm64/').tar.gz" | tar -xz -O beszel-agent | tee ./beszel-agent >/dev/null && chmod +x beszel-agent

Copy to /usr/local/bin

sudo cp beszel-agent /usr/local/bin

Create a LaunchDaemon

sudo nano /Library/LaunchDaemon/com.beszel.agent.plist

Edit the following, replacing the port and key as required

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.beszel.agent</string>

    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/bin/bash</string>
        <string>-c</string>
        <string>PORT=45876 KEY="ssh-ed25519 XXXXXX" /usr/local/bin/beszel-agent</string>
    </array>

    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>

    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <dict>
        <!-- Prevent excessive restarts -->
        <key>SuccessfulExit</key>
        <false/>
        <key>ThrottleInterval</key>
        <integer>60</integer> <!-- Minimum 60 seconds between restarts -->
    </dict>

    <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
    <string>/var/log/beszel-agent.err</string>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/var/log/beszel-agent.log</string>

    <!-- Lower the agent's process priority -->
    <key>Nice</key>
    <integer>10</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

Load the LaunchDaemon

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemon/com.beszel.agent.plist

Test if it's running

pgrep -l beszel-agent
38277 beszel-agent

Just to help others, there's a small typo here where the folder name should be LaunchDaemons

[henrygd]

Yes, it was brought up in #464 that we can use our GoReleaser config to make our git repository available as a homebrew tap.

Once we get that configured properly, we can just include the homebrew commands in the install script for easy setup.

https://goreleaser.com/customization/homebrew/