autopkginstall

Summary: automate the installation of .pkg or .mpkg files if put into a certain folder

In response to http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/113489/unattended-installation-of-pkg-file, here is a script to automate the installation of .pkg and/or .mpkg files.

Installation

1) You must edit the com.tjluoma.AutoInstallPKG.plist file and change /Users/luomat/Action/AutoInstallPKG to the full path to whatever directory that you want to monitor for new .pkg or .mpkg files

<key>QueueDirectories</key>
<array>
	<string>/Users/luomat/Action/AutoInstallPKG</string>
</array>

2) After editing com.tjluoma.AutoInstallPKG.plist move it to ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.tjluoma.AutoInstallPKG.plist

3) Install autopkginstall.sh to somewhere in your $PATH such as /usr/local/bin/autopkginstall.sh

4) Make sure that autopkginstall.sh is executable:

chmod 755 `which autopkginstall.sh`

5) In order for installations to run unattended, you must add this line to /etc/sudoers

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

(See man visudo for more information on editing the sudoers file. BBEdit users should check out bbwait to use BBEdit to edit the sudoers file.)

Note that this change introduces a minor security concern in that any administrator account on the local Mac which is a member of the admin group will be able to install pkg and mpkg files without having to enter their password.

6) Install terminal-notifier (Optional)

If found in $PATH, terminal-notifier will be used to tell the user when packages are installed using this script.

Troubleshooting

Error messages will be saved to /tmp/AutoInstallPKG.errors.log

Other informational messages may be saved to /tmp/AutoInstallPKG.log

If you do not want to use /tmp/ for those files, edit the com.tjluoma.AutoInstallPKG.plist file accordingly.

Warranty

Absolutely None. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

If the laws where you live do not allow for me to deny any responsibility for this, then you are not allowed to use it.

(That being said, I'm using this myself and haven't have any problems. YMMV. Use at your own risk. If it breaks, you get to keep both pieces.)