Lighthouse Nightingale Extension on iOS?

[SaturnsLament]

Hey all,

I'm trying to debug an issue on my iPhone 13 Pro, running iOS 17.

I am using developer mode to examine system processes. I found this obscure process called Lighthouse Nightingale Extension. I've tried googling it. I find information on a macOS Lighthouse extension, but nothing involving Lighthouse Nightingale extensions on iOS. Using quotes in the google search reveals no information at all. I find nothing for iOS in any search performed.

P.S., is there any way in Xcode to automatically find out the source and purpose of iOS processes, like a process information button? I've advocated for years for System Activity in macOS to include an information button that, when clicked, identifies the date a process was added to the operating system, the name of the publisher/developer of the system process, the name of the application or package that installed the extension, etc. I thought Xcode, which I have not used in the past, would have such an option. If there is, I can't find it.


OTHER PROCESSES I am trying to identify include:

PFLHRPeriodPredMLH,
dtdeviceinfod,
ThreeBarsXPCService,
DPSSubmissionService,
Budd,
SBRendererService,
Nanoregistrylaunchd,
MISAgent,
RepackagingWorker,
DayStreamProcessorService,
ManagedSettingsAgent (I know what this is but not why it is running, no MDM).

If you are familiar with any of these, I would appreciate feedback.

 

[ManuCH]

Many of those system services are not really documented because they aren't thought for the end user to work with. Therefore, unless someone debugged that specific thing in the past, you won't find much information about it.

Did you see if it's writing log entries to the console log? That would be your best bet. Apple's system processes aren't officially documented nor is any of this open source.

 

[SaturnsLament]

Many of those system services are not really documented because they aren't thought for the end user to work with. Therefore, unless someone debugged that specific thing in the past, you won't find much information about it.

Did you see if it's writing log entries to the console log? That would be your best bet. Apple's system processes aren't officially documented nor is any of this open source.

Out of curiosity, how do you know they’re Apple processes? I reckoned that a couple were—budd, for instance—but I didn’t find any indication that the others were. I also thought that multi-worded process names, like Lighthouse Nightingale Extension, tend to be third party, as Apple tends to abbreviate or shorten process names from their long-form names.

 

[ManuCH]

Out of curiosity, how do you know they’re Apple processes? I reckoned that a couple were—budd, for instance—but I didn’t find any indication that the others were. I also thought that multi-worded process names, like Lighthouse Nightingale Extension, tend to be third party, as Apple tends to abbreviate or shorten process names from their long-form names.

Oh, I may have worded that incorrectly. Not all of them are necessarily Apple processes. Some may just be apps you installed which use not-so-obvious names. Do you observe those also on newly set up iPhones? That way you can distinguish which is which.

 

[SaturnsLament]

I did a DFU restore of my iPhone and did not see it. However, I didn't have a large selection of Apps. I only use a couple social media apps on my phone. I've restored all the apps I had before, and still don't see those processes.

 

[autolink]

There was a crash report on my Mac this morning. Here are the first few lines:

Process: RepackagingWorker [10775]
Path: /System/Library/ExtensionKit/Extensions/RepackagingWorker.appex/Contents/MacOS/RepackagingWorker
Identifier: com.apple.aiml.RepackagingWorker
Version: 1.0 (1)
Build Info: AIMLInstrumentationStreams-3302008001000000~49
Code Type: ARM-64 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [1]
User ID: 501

Date/Time: 2023-12-21 04:17:45.4789 -0600
OS Version: macOS 14.2.1 (23C71)
Report Version: 12
Anonymous UUID: 4176D16C-8682-852E-0946-43E5C319F247

In the body of the crash report there are several references to LighthouseBackground, but not to the other processes you list.

Don't know if this will help, but I thought that I would pass it along.

 

[ve79]

There was a crash report on my Mac this morning. Here are the first few lines:

Process: RepackagingWorker [10775]
Path: /System/Library/ExtensionKit/Extensions/RepackagingWorker.appex/Contents/MacOS/RepackagingWorker
Identifier: com.apple.aiml.RepackagingWorker
Version: 1.0 (1)
Build Info: AIMLInstrumentationStreams-3302008001000000~49
Code Type: ARM-64 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [1]
User ID: 501

Date/Time: 2023-12-21 04:17:45.4789 -0600
OS Version: macOS 14.2.1 (23C71)
Report Version: 12
Anonymous UUID: 4176D16C-8682-852E-0946-43E5C319F247

In the body of the crash report there are several references to LighthouseBackground, but not to the other processes you list.

Don't know if this will help, but I thought that I would pass it along.

This process, I was just researching this myself. My crash logs in console on my new Mac M3 Max (not a month old) has a couple of these from RepackagingWorker as well, with the latest one just 3 days ago. I went to research RepackagingWorker - using Google, asking ChatGPT, so forth - and it appears there is zero information on the web about the purpose of this process.

Can anyone point me in the direction of information regarding the RepackagingWorker process, so I can try to understand what it does for the OS and why it's crashing here and there?

 

[ManuCH]

It's one of the many Apple private frameworks, but this one seems to be particularly undocumented as nobody seems to be interested in it.

You can try to execute this in your terminal so it shows you all the strings in the executable, but it still doesn't really give a clue:

strings /System/Library/ExtensionKit/Extensions/RepackagingWorker.appex/Contents/MacOS/RepackagingWorker