Creating a Mac OS X launchd plist for vpnd

Question

I need to create a launchd plist that causes vpnd to launch at startup. vpnd works fine when invoked from the command line, but I can't figure out how to make a plist that does the same thing. Can anyone help? Here's what I've cobbled together so far:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
 <key>Label</key>
 <string>com.apple.ppp.l2tp</string>
 <key>OnDemand</key>
 <false/>
 <key>Program</key>
  <string>/usr/sbin/vpnd</string>
 <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
   <string>vpnd</string>
  </array>
 <key>RunAtLoad</key>
 <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Running it with launchctl -w has no effect, triggers no errors, and outputs nothing to the console. Does the XML look right?

Answer 1

I grabbed this from a 10.4 server...

/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.ppp.l2tp.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.apple.ppp.l2tp</string>
    <key>OnDemand</key>
    <false/>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/usr/sbin/vpnd</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>vpnd</string>
        <string>-x</string>
        <string>-i</string>
        <string>com.apple.ppp.l2tp</string>
    </array>
    <key>ServiceIPC</key>
    <false/>
</dict>
</plist>

Answer 2

Looking at the some other plist files in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons, the ProgramArguments entry seems to wrong; you need the full path of the program here.

Remove the Program key and Try something like this:

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
        <string>/usr/sbin/vpnd</string>
</array>

Also, you might want to add a KeepAlive key as well.

man launchd.plist can help.