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Starting Mac OS X Applications (as root) from the console

I recently wanted to start Mac OS X Applications from the console. Sometimes it is possible to start an application directly if it’s possible to find the executable in the application folder. But sometimes, espaccially for application installers there is no executable. In this case it is possible to start the application (or installer) by using the open command. e.g. to start TextEdit:

open /Applications/TextEdit.app

The open command does the same as clicking on a file / application. So you could open a pdf document like this:

open document.pdf

Sometimes an installer requires to run as a superuser. Starting the installer with

sudo open /Applications/INSTALLER_APP

unfortunately does not work, because only open will run as a superuser, but not the installer itself. To start the installer as superuser the following might help:

  • pkg installer:
    • sudo ./MyApplication.app/Contents/MacOS/Installer
  • other installers (no linebreak!)
    • sudo /System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Support/LaunchCFMApp \
  ./MyApplication.app/Contents/MacOS/application

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 at 16:30 and is filed under random rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Starting Mac OS X Applications (as root) from the console”

  1. jmerkel Says:
    March 27th, 2009 at 01:30

    Yes, thats where usefully especially if you want to see the console output (e.g. error messages).

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