The first piece of software I’m releasing this week is an updated version of Unlockupd. Unlockupd is a Mac OS X daemon that works around a bug in lookupd, a system service which is required for proper operation of Mac OS X 10.0 – 10.4. If lookupd fails, the system quickly becomes unusable. Unlockupd periodically checks lookupd’s status and forces it to restart should it fail.
Fortunately, the bug has been fixed in Mac OS X 10.5, which does not have a lookupd service, but it was present in Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4.
Unlockupd was first released in 2004, and it really should have been released under an open source back then. Better late than never, though. At this point, it’s really more of an historical relic than a useful program, but hopefully someone will find some use with the code.
More information is available on Unlockupd’s web page, including download links for Unlockupd and its source code. Unlockupd is licensed under the GPL v3.
Tags: mac os x, open source, unlockupd
