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

pgrep -l beszel-agent
38277 beszel-agent

[henrygd]

Thank you, this is extremely helpful! I really appreciate you sharing this!

Do you have a large number of temperature sensors by any chance? Or are you running a lot of Docker containers?

[cliss]

I'm just a random passerby, but this was extremely helpful; thank you, @Zesty0wl! 🍻

[Zesty0wl]

I left a couple of Mac Mini's running with nice set to 10 overnight and it's improved but not resolved, still very long gaps in reporting where the agent is not able to function due to being rate limited.

You could be on to something with the temp sensor idea. None of mine have many docker containers, maybe 8 at max. But they are reporting a lot of temp sensors...

Apple Silicon M2 Pro