With Mac OS X Tiger, "launchd" is now pid 1:
$ ps ajxw |sort -n +1| head
USER PID PPID PGID SESS JOBC STAT TT TIME COMMAND
root 1 0 1 166ae88 0 S<s ?? 0:02.76 /sbin/launchd
root 28 1 28 166ac60 0 Ss ?? 0:00.01 /sbin/dynamic_pager -F /private/var/vm/swapfile
root 32 1 32 166ab4c 0 Ss ?? 0:01.79 kextd
root 36 1 36 166aa38 0 Ss ?? 0:06.28 /usr/sbin/configd
root 37 1 37 166a924 0 Ss ?? 0:01.23 /usr/sbin/coreaudiod
root 38 1 38 166a810 0 Ss ?? 0:01.62 /usr/sbin/diskarbitrationd
root 39 1 39 166a6fc 0 Ss ?? 0:00.06 /usr/sbin/memberd -x
root 40 1 40 166a5e8 0 Ss ?? 0:00.95 /usr/sbin/securityd
root 42 1 42 166a4d4 0 Ss ?? 0:01.50 /usr/sbin/notifyd
Quite obviously, it is filling the role that init plays on System V systems. It is also intended to replace rc scripts (from the man page):
NOTES
In Darwin it is preferable to have your daemon launch via launchd instead
of modifying rc or creating a SystemStarter Startup Item.
At some point in the future, we hope to completely phase out the use of
rc.
It's even taken over some things that used to be done by cron such as running "perodic":
$ cat /etc/crontab
# The periodic and atrun jobs have moved to launchd jobs
# See /System/Library/LaunchDaemons
#
Oddly, you'll find apparent duplication of content in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons and /etc/xinetd.d files.
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Fri Jun 10 01:29:26 2005: Subject: Re: launchd (Mac OS X Tiger startup) anonymous
The duplication between /etc/xinetd.d and /System/Library/LaunchDaemons is probably explained by the method of installing Tiger. If you upgrade, any contents of xinetd.d are preserved, while xinetd.d is empty after a clean Tiger install (including Archive and Install).
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