Ensure Ninja Service is Running [Macintosh]

Overview

This script is designed to keep the NinjaRMM Agent (com.ninjarmm.agentd) and Ninja Patcher (com.ninjarmm.patcher) services running on macOS. It automatically recovers from service failures or hung states without requiring manual intervention or a system reboot.

When to use: Deploy this script to your Mac endpoints to ensure they maintain constant, reliable connectivity to the NinjaRMM platform, even if the background daemons crash or become unresponsive.

How it Works

When the script runs, it performs the following actions to set up self-healing:

• Service Configuration: It verifies the Ninja LaunchDaemon plists exist, checks if native recovery (KeepAlive) is configured, and ensures the services are enabled and loaded into launchd.
• Watchdog Script: It writes a background monitoring script to the local disk at /Library/Application Support/NinjaSelfHeal/.
• LaunchDaemon: It registers a persistent macOS LaunchDaemon named com.ninjarmm.EnsureNinjaServiceRunning to run the monitoring script in the background.
  • Runs every 60 minutes continuously.
• Immediate Remediation: It immediately checks the current status of the services. If any are stopped, it attempts to start them using launchctl and waits up to 120 seconds for confirmation.

Logging & Event Management

Because macOS does not use the Windows Event Log, this script writes all diagnostic actions, warnings, and errors to a dedicated text log file and the macOS Unified Log (syslog).

To prevent the log file from growing indefinitely, the script automatically configures macOS newsyslog to rotate the logs.

• Log File: /var/log/ninja_selfheal.log
• Syslog Source: NinjaSelfHeal (via the logger command)

Log Level	Destination	Source	Description
INFO	Log File & Syslog	NinjaSelfHeal	Service started successfully, or native KeepAlive recovery was verified.
WARN	Log File & Syslog	NinjaSelfHeal	Service is not running; attempting restart, or native KeepAlive is missing from the plist.
ERROR	Log File & Syslog	NinjaSelfHeal	Service restart failed completely. Manual intervention may be required.

Sample Run

Dependencies

• Solution: NinjaRMM Agent Self-Heal

Automation Setup/Import

Automation Configuration

Output

• Activity Details: A summary log displaying each service's final status, the configured monitoring interval, and the result of the operation.
• Final Result: A clear text output indicating overall success (e.g., Success: All Ninja services are running. Monitoring scheduled every 60 minutes.) or failure if manual intervention is required.

Changelog

2026-07-07

• Initial version of the document.