MacOS – How to open a shell script in a new Terminal window and run it with administrator privileges

administratorapplescriptcommand linemacossudo

I need to programmatically open a shell script in a Terminal window and run it with administrator privileges. I'm using osascript as it displays a convenient prompt for an admin login/password.

I'm currently using this :

osascript -e 'do shell script "open -a Terminal \"'"$appDir"'\"" with administrator privileges'

The trouble is, even after entering the credentials in the OS X prompt, the newly opened script will beg for a password at the first sudo command.

How do I pass the admin credentials to the opened script?

Best Answer

I'd try writing a simple script:

#!/bin/bash
sudo /usr/bin/id

save this as something.command, change its permissions to executable with chmod +x, and then run this from AppleScript with

osascript -e 'do shell script "open -a Terminal ./something.command"'

Instead of /usr/bin/id you can call whatever script you need to run with admin privileges then.

EDIT:

This will work:

osascript -e 'do shell script "sudo /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/Contents/MacOS/Terminal" with administrator privileges'

Related Solutions

Passing a password to an Automator application

AppleScript should let you do this by using with administrator privileges:

osascript -e 'do shell script "sudo -s launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ftp.plist" with administrator privileges'

This doesn't pass the password, but prompts for it with a standard OS X prompt:

You can use this in your Automator workflow in one of the two following ways:

Open a new Safari window in the current Space from Terminal with multiple tabs (URLs)

Here is an AppleScript that should help you. Open AppleScript Editor and save this as a script. I have modified the source that I found here to support taking arguments on the command line.

Use it like this:

osascript new_window.scpt http://www.google.com http://www.stackoverflow.com

Of course, replace the URLs above with your own URLs.

new_window.scpt

on run argv
    tell application "Safari"
        if (count argv) = 0 then
            -- If you dont want to open a new window for an empty list, replace the
            -- following line with just "return"
            set {first_url, rest_urls} to {"", {}}
        else
            -- `item 1 of ...` gets the first item of a list, `rest of ...` gets
            -- everything after the first item of a list.  We treat the two
            -- differently because the first item must be placed in a new window, but
            -- everything else must be placed in a new tab.
            set {first_url, rest_urls} to {item 1 of argv, the rest of argv}
        end if

        make new document at end of documents with properties {URL:first_url}
        tell window 1
            repeat with the_url in rest_urls
                make new tab at end of tabs with properties {URL:the_url}
            end repeat
        end tell
        activate
    end tell
end run

You could even create an alias for this in Terminal and be able to use it easier. I would add the following to ~/.bash_profile:

alias newwindow='osascript /path/to/new_window.scpt'

Call newwindow whatever you want. Save .bash_profile and restart Terminal for it to work.

In case anyone is looking for a similar solution for Google Chrome, here is a different take on the same idea.

chrome_new_window.scpt

on run argv
    tell application "Google Chrome"
        if (count argv) = 0 then
            make new window
        else
            tell (make new window)
                set URL of active tab to item 1 of argv
                repeat with the_url in the rest of argv
                    open location the_url
                end repeat
            end tell
        end if
        set active tab index of first window to 1
        activate
    end tell
end run