Managing installation of applications on a computer device

1. A method of managing installation of an application on a computer device, comprising:

receiving, by an agent registered with an operating system on the computer device, a notification in response to a user request from a user account to mount a disk image, wherein the user account does not have privileges to copy an application bundle to a privileged system location;

deciding, by the agent in response to the notification, whether to allow mounting of the disk image and, if so, causing the disk image to be mounted by the computer device;

detecting, by the agent, the application bundle within the disk image after mounting; and

determining, by the agent in response to detecting the application bundle within the mounted disk image, whether to action installation of the application bundle and, if so, causing the application bundle to be copied to the privileged system location in the computer device based on privileges of the agent without changing privileges of the user account, thereby installing the application on the computer device.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the notification is received by the agent from the operating system of the computer device.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the notification is received by the agent responsive to the user request which is directed to the operating system to request mounting of the disk image by the operating system.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising registering, by the agent, with the operating system of the computer system, and wherein the notification is received by the agent from the operating system based on the registering.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising consulting, by the agent, a policy file held on the computer device.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein consulting the policy file is based on meta-data of the disk image as obtained by the agent, wherein the policy file is consulted prior to causing mounting of the disk image by the computer device.

7. The method of claim 5 , wherein consulting the policy file is based on meta-data of the application bundle as obtained by the agent, and wherein the policy file is consulted prior to causing the application bundle to be copied to a privileged system location in the computer device.

8. The method of claim 5 , wherein consulting the policy file is based on a set of identities as obtained by the agent relevant to the user request, the set of identities including at least a user identity of the user account from which the user request originated.

9. The method of claim 5 , further comprising performing custom messaging by the agent according to a policy result returned from consulting the policy file.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein the agent performs the custom messaging prior to causing the disk image to be mounted by the computer device.

11. The method of claim 9 , wherein the agent performs the custom messaging prior to causing the application bundle to be copied to the privileged system location in the computer device.

12. The method of claim 9 , wherein the custom messaging includes at least one of a confirmation, a challenge-response, and a reason.

13. The method of claim 5 , wherein the agent consults the policy file through a policy server.

14. The method of claim 1 , further comprising performing auditing by the agent in relation to any one or more of the notification of the user request, the deciding by the agent to cause the disk image to be mounted by the computer device, and the determining by the agent to cause the application bundle to be copied to the privileged system location in the computer device.

15. The method of claim 1 , further comprising determining, by the agent, that a matching application bundle already exists in the privileged system location and, if so, deciding whether to overwrite the matching application bundle with the application bundle copied from the disk image.

16. The method of claim 1 , wherein the agent comprises a daemon which operates as a background process executed by the operating system on the computer device.

17. The method of claim 1 , wherein the computer device comprises the operating system which is Unix-like.

18. A computer device comprising:

a memory circuit; and

a processing circuit configured to manage installation of an application program on the computer device via an agent registered with an operating system of the computer device, wherein to manage the installation of the application program, the processing circuit is configured to:

receive a notification in response to a user request from a user account to mount a disk image, wherein the user account does not have privileges to copy an application bundle to a privileged system location;

determine, in response to receiving the notification, whether to allow mounting of the disk image and, if so, causing the disk image to be mounted by the computer device;

detecting the application bundle within the disk image after mounting; and

determine, in response to detecting the application bundle within the mounted disk image, whether to action installation of the application bundle and, if so, causing the application bundle to be copied to the privileged system location in the computer device based on privileges of the agent without changing privileges of the user account, thereby installing the application on the computer device.

19. A tangible non-transitory computer-readable storage medium embodying a program registered with an operating system, the program, when executed by a processing circuit of a computer device, causes the computing device to:

receive a notification in response to a user request from a user account to mount a disk image, wherein the user account does not have privileges to copy an application bundle to a privileged system location;

determine, in response to the notification, whether to allow mounting of the disk image and, if so, causing the disk image to be mounted by the computer device;

detect an application bundle within the disk image after mounting; and

determine, in response to detecting the application bundle within the mounted disk image, whether to action installation of the application bundle and, if so, causing the application bundle to be copied to a privileged system location in the computer device based on privileges of the agent without changing privileges of the user account, thereby installing the application on the computer device.

20. The tangible non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 19 , wherein the privileges of the agent has privileges to copy the application bundle to the privileged system location.