Platform Notes (Mac OS X)

Port Status

The Mac OS X port is a Tier 2 Port. The main branch will compile on macOS Monterey (12.6.8) on Intel, and it can run if the kern.sysv.shmmax parameter is correct (see below).

Verified Releases

• FreeM Lite
• FreeM 0.65.1-rc0

Build Notes

In order to build FreeM on macOS, you will need to install the following:

• Apple XCode command-line tools
• Homebrew

Then, install the following with the brew package manager:

• automake
• autoconf
• gcc
• libtool
• texinfo
• texi2html
• git

Testing Details

We build the macOS port on the following hardware:

• MacBook Air (Early 2015) running macOS Monterey (12.6.8)
• M1 Mac Mini running macOS Sequoia

Required Kernel Tuning

You will need to set the kern.sysv.shmmax sysctl parameter to at least 17002496 (the value must be a multiple of the system page size; generally 4096).

To determine the current setting, see below:

$ sudo sysctl -a | grep shmmax
kern.sysv.shmmax: 4194304

In the above example, the shmmax value is 4194304, and thus insufficient for proper FreeM operation.

See your macOS version below for instructions on modifying this value.

All Versions

• Find the file com.startup.sysctl.plist file in the scripts subdirectory of the FreeM distribution
• Copy it to /Library/LaunchDaemons
• Change the ownership of /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.startup.sysctl.plist to root:wheel
• Run sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.startup.sysctl.plist
• Reboot

See the following example:

$ sudo cp scripts/com.startup.sysctl.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons/
$ sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.startup.sysctl.plist
$ sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.startup.sysctl.plist

Starting the FreeM Daemon Automatically

Coming soon.

Port Challenges

The shared memory architecture of FreeM had to be rewritten to support Apple's System V IPC changes for their Unified Memory Architecture.