Installing packages without restarting; remotely

Rob Buckley suggests a Terminal command for using Mac OS X's built-in SSH capabilities to remotely install software packages, and also a tip for avoiding a restart for installers that would normally require you do so.

"I discovered this while ssh-ing into my home iMac from work: if you want to install a software package that would normally require a restart after installation and what to avoid the restart, use the command line installer instead and you won't have to. The command is:

sudo installer -pkg packagename.pkg -target /

(Note: The above command assumes you want to install onto the boot partition and the package you want to install is in your current working directory.)

"You can combine that with command line tool with the 'hdiutil mount' and 'cd /Volumes/...' command to mount .dmg disk images and install their .pkg files remotely from another machine, which can save a lot of time.

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