Unattended installation of pkg file

Solution 1:

Short Answer: yes.

Long Answer: Yes, but…a full answer to this question includes a technical answer and a practical concern.

First, the technical answer

You can install a .pkg or .mpkg using this syntax:

sudo installer -verboseR -pkg "/path/to/pkg/foo.mpkg"

If the installer isn't 'signed' properly, you'll need to add -allowUntrusted

sudo installer -allowUntrusted -verboseR -pkg "/path/to/pkg/foo.mpkg"

You may also need to specify where you want it installed, using -target / (I'm not 100% certain this is required, but it's a good idea):

sudo installer -allowUntrusted -verboseR -pkg "/path/to/pkg/foo.mpkg" -target /

Now, the problem is that sudo is going to ask you for your administrator password when you try to run installer. If you want to automate this, you need to tell your Mac not to require your sudo password when running the installer. To do that, you can add this line to your /etc/sudoers file:

%admin ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/installer

See man visudo for instructions on editing that file.

Second, the practical concern

If you are the only person who uses your Mac, adding the above line to /etc/sudoers is not a big deal.

However, if this is a shared Mac, then other people who are in the 'admin' group will be able to run /usr/sbin/installer without being prompted for their password.

Also, obviously if someone gets into your 'admin' account, they too could, theoretically, cause mischief with /usr/sbin/installer. Although I am at a loss to think of exactly what they would do, it's a trade-off of security versus convenience.

Third, a github script

I wrote pkginstall.sh to do some nice things like log the process, as well as tell you whether or not you are supposed to reboot after installing the package.

Last but not least: Automate "how?"

As far as how you want to automate the installation, that depends on more specifics of what you are trying to do. You could, for example, make a folder such as ~/Action/AutoInstallPKG/ and tell launchd to install any .pkg or .mpkg files that are added to that folder, and then move it aside afterwards.

I have been meaning to do something like this for a long time, and so I finally put it together. You can find it at https://github.com/tjluoma/autopkginstall. Installation instructions are included at Github, so I won't repeat them here.

Solution 2:

I think you might be dancing very close to your own answer. You mention that you don't have Apple's Remote Desktop. I would recommend considering it for what you are trying to do. I use it as you are describing all of the time - I have a .pkg file that needs to be installed on multiple computers in my LAN, I highlight the computers I want it installed on, and tell Remote Desktop to install it. It does much more than this, but it WILL do these remote installs for you. It is $80 for a license with unlimited clients.

If the $80 is a sticking point - you could look at munki, which is

"a set of tools that, used together with a webserver-based repository of packages and package metadata, can be used by OS X administrators to manage software installs (and in many cases removals) on OS X client machines."

I have not used it myself, but have a lot of respect for the people coding it and using it in real life. It is a bit more set up and work than Remote Desktop - but has a lot more options as well.

Hopefully you can use one of these two programs to do what you are after.

Solution 3:

Finally, thanks to dr.nixon solution of my concrete question, I've got to handle the creation of an unattended installation as described in the question via Platypus.

User has to start the app, the rest will done automatically.