Apple has some restrictions in place to prevent access to LaunchAgents running in a user session context.
But you may want to load or refresh a LaunchAgent as part of your install without requiring the user to log out and back in.
I prefer not to require logouts and reboots in my installation packages. Where possible, I use munki’s unattended option so software installs silently and the user is not prompted.
After some experimentation, I came up with this hacky method of getting a LaunchAgent to load from a package being installed as root. If you have a cleaner way to accomplish this, please let me know. Update: Please see Per Olofsson’s comment for a much better method until I update this gist.
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| #!/bin/bash | |
| # if someone is logged in | |
| if who | grep -q console; then | |
| # get the logged in user's uid | |
| LOGGED_IN_UID=`ls -ln /dev/console | awk '{ print $3 }'` | |
| # use the uid and pgrep to find the Finder process id | |
| FINDER_PID=`pgrep -U ${LOGGED_IN_UID} Finder` | |
| # use launchctl bsexec to run applescript code in the same Mach bootstrap namespace hierachy as the Finder | |
| launchctl bsexec "${FINDER_PID}" osascript -e ' | |
| tell app "Finder" | |
| do shell script " | |
| launchctl unload -S Aqua /Library/LaunchAgents/com.company.agent.plist | |
| launchctl load -S Aqua /Library/LaunchAgents/com.company.agent.plist | |
| " | |
| end tell | |
| ' | |
| fi |
Pattern Buffer: 