OS X User Account Control Popup: “finish_installation” wants to make changes.

Playing with my Mac this evening, the following system popup appeared, while I'm browsing around the web:


"finish_installation wants to make changes. Type an administrator's name and password to allow this."

I'm always a bit suspicious, esp. if it shows up when I'm wandering around the web in Chrome. I assume nothing can get out of the sandbox, but who knows? I've already disabled the Java plugin, and nondescript programs asking me to type in my admin password always make me pause.

Various Google searches return non-helpful results, since it splits "finish" and "installation", and, again doesn't do order-dependent or phrase searches. And since most of the phrase is pretty non-unique, the results aren't great.

But, I did manage to find this post on MacRumors{admin="" asking="" finish_installation="" for="" is="" password=""}.

Turns out the "finish_installation" is part of Sparkle, which is that handy-dandy autoupdate framework. But it's not helpful when you don't know which app is requesting the update, and/or if this app is legit.

So open up Activity Monitor, and Inspect the finish_installation process, which will tell you what you want to know.

Digging up info on the finish_installation process.
Digging up info on the finish_installation process.

In this case, the app to be updated is the Amazon Cloud Drive program, which is legit.

Shows us where this executable is being called from.
Shows us where this executable is being called from.