Bypass OS X "security" for my own Automator applications?

May 6, 2015 11:31 AM

After upgrading to 10.10.3 I have a repeat of a problem I had months ago, and still no satisfactory solution.

To save time, I am reposting the question as it appeared last October, because it is the same problem. Only a few edits.

Timely Help Needed Updated to Yosemite and now all my calendar workflows require me to click OK to allow them to be run for the first time.

I use basic 2-step Automator apps (Get Specified iTunes Item > Play iTunes Playlist) to open radio shows that have been recorded previously. using Calendar I use the alert feature to open the resulting applications/files at certain times to run our online community radio station's rebroadcast schedule. Upon upgrading to Yosemite all of the scripts stopped working, and recently upon upgrading to 10.10.3 the same thing has happened. So I have been manually going through the calendar items and changing them to Open File at time of the event. Fine. But now when they fire OS X prompts me to allow the applications to be run for the first time.

I don't have time to babysit a week's worth of calendar scripts and some run in the middle of the night. Please help.

Things I have already done:

1) In System Preferences I have allowed applications from anywhere because this was an issue in the past.
2) I have tried manually firing the Automator scripts from within Finder, but I don't get the same prompts as I do when they open automatically via the calendar workflows.

Please help.

I have a similar question open on the Apple discussion site as well, in case folks wish to answer there too.

posted by terrapin to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

Response by poster: Another interesting, but unrelated, eff up that happened with 10.10.3 upgrade was that all of my sharing settings were unchecked (screen sharing, etc), meaning I had to drive to the radio station studio to turn those settings back on! FFS, Apple.
posted by terrapin at 11:33 AM on May 6, 2015

The following shell command will allow you to open jpg, zip, webarchive, and other files that OS X has for some reason decided are unsafe. I don't know if it will work for automator scripts, but it can't hurt.

In a terminal window, type:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/your/file.extension

posted by alms at 1:24 PM on May 6, 2015

Ok, I guess my main question would by why don't you use something that is built more for this than the user land OS stuff?

Megaseg is a pretty awesome app, built specifically for radio programing/scheduling/automation, and is only $200 for the full pro version (with probably a ton of features you will probably never use).

The main reason I bring this up is the obvious question: how much is your time worth?

You will likely have to keep fixing this problem as things move forward. For $200, you can have a professional piece of software, with support, that does everything you appear to be trying to do.

I totally understand the fun of DIY and free solutions, but at some point, someone else is going to have to be able to use the system you set up, and I think this option is probably the most cost-effective.

And on a side note, awesome work doing community radio and LP-FM stuff. I'm working with a few of my local LP-FM stations as well, but not on the technical side (yet).
posted by daq at 1:46 PM on May 6, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, you can more or less avoid all of the user security controls by enabling the root user and running through that, but then you're leaving a remote machine unattended and logged in as root, which is not a great idea.

Seconding daq, look for more of a purpose built solution.
posted by Oktober at 2:20 PM on May 6, 2015

As someone who has spent hours hacking around with scripts for similar things, PLEASE OH MY GOD just buy an off the shelf solution made for it if it's available.

The only time this sort of thing is worth it is when there really isn't a purpose built solution out there.
posted by emptythought at 2:52 PM on May 6, 2015

Response by poster: alms, that is pretty much the same solution suggested last October, and didn't work. Thanks.

others, sorry, but unhelpful to tell me to buy out-of-the-box software, when I didn't ask. We have looked at them and none of them work the way we need them too, and so we dismissed them. We rolled our own for a reason.

Perhaps my next step is to learn how to codesign Automator apps. Last time I tried to learn that my eyes glazed over.
posted by terrapin at 6:21 AM on May 7, 2015

Response by poster: alms, what I mean by didn't work is that it apparently isn't a permanent solution if I encounter the same issue 7 months later when the OS is updated. I do appreciate the suggestion.
posted by terrapin at 6:30 AM on May 7, 2015

that it apparently isn't a permanent solution if I encounter the same issue 7 months later when the OS is updated.

Automator breaks something almost every time there is an OS upgrade. I've had to rejigger automator stuff without fail at point upgrades even. Roll back the upgrade and put that box behind a firewall.
posted by the giant pill at 7:16 AM on May 7, 2015

Response by poster: My apologies to the snap reaction before. I do plan to rethink Megaseg, and see if perhaps in the years since I first considered it, if it is now a solution. At a glance it appears that the Pro version may solve some other problems. We -- my overlords -- may need to drop a few features, but that may be the price.

Hard to let go of ones' baby, but it may be time to go kicking and screaming into the future. Thanks for the nudge.
posted by terrapin at 8:14 AM on May 7, 2015

Best answer: We tested MegaSeg and RadioLogik and eventually decided on RadioLogik for it's Scheduler co-application. This allows us to bypass Automator and Calendar, and we are very pleased with the results. We also decided on RadioLogik for it's scriptability with Applescript and its very helpful forums.

Both MegaSeg and RadioLogik work in a way where DJs are using all digital files and interfacing with the software rather than using multiple inputs -- turntables, tablets, CDs, etc -- through a console as our station does.

Thanks for the help and suggestions.
posted by terrapin at 12:44 PM on June 5, 2015