[Pythonmac-SIG] appscript and launching apps from "background-only" Python processes

[Bill Janssen]

Ned Deily <nad at acm.org> wrote:

> In article <11040.1225240345 at parc.com>, Bill Janssen <janssen at parc.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> > I'm starting a Python daemon using SystemStarter, and in it I'm using
> > appscript to launch an app (Entourage).  I get the following error:
> > 
> >  CantLaunchApplicationError: CantLaunchApplicationError -606: Application is 
> >  background-only.
> > 
> > If I start the same daemon from the command-line manually, it works
> > fine.  I'm guessing that some environment variable is not being set by
> > SystemStarter, which is what makes it "background-only".  Can anyone
> > shed some light on this?
> 
> I suspect the issue is that processes started by SystemStarter are not 
> "connected" to the windowserver and are running as root so attempts to 
> launch Carbon or Cocoa gui apps will fail.  Tech note 2083 has a lot of 
> details about this and the perils of launching gui apps from daemons:
> 
> <http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2005/tn2083.html>

Actually, the process is running under a regular user user-id, and only
attempts to launch Entourage (to read the user's address book) when that
user is logged in.  The use case is kosher; what I need is a way to tell
the system that.

Bill