Software Update Troubles

[ahunter]

We are having a few problems with Software updates on apple 10.6.2,3,4. In Server admin under Software updates it has fully synced as of today. All new updates have a tick in the box next to them and a blue status light saying they are available for download. There are also a lot of really old updates in the list that we are never going to use.

 

I have managed to get the clients talking to the server for updates but they do not download all the updates available to them. For example all our clients are on 10.6.2 and I want them to download the 10.6.4 update from the server that is currently enabled.

 

What happens is a message comes up saying updates are available when you run software update but another message immediatley pops up over the top saying there are no updates available, you can see the original dialog box behind it saying "show details" but you cannot click on it.

 

Also on server admin on the update server I cannot seem to tick/untick the enable box its all greyed out is this normal?

[Guest theeldergeek]

We are having a few problems with Software updates on apple 10.6.2,3,4. In Server admin under Software updates it has fully synced as of today. All new updates have a tick in the box next to them and a blue status light saying they are available for download. There are also a lot of really old updates in the list that we are never going to use.

 

I have managed to get the clients talking to the server for updates but they do not download all the updates available to them. For example all our clients are on 10.6.2 and I want them to download the 10.6.4 update from the server that is currently enabled.

 

What happens is a message comes up saying updates are available when you run software update but another message immediatley pops up over the top saying there are no updates available, you can see the original dialog box behind it saying "show details" but you cannot click on it.

 

Also on server admin on the update server I cannot seem to tick/untick the enable box its all greyed out is this normal?

 

You say "I have managed to get the clients talking to the server for updates". How have you confirmed this?

 

When you commence the software update on the client, does the name of the update server (i.e. domain.xserve.local) come up in the top of the software update window bar?

 

Have you also added an exception in your proxy by-pass settings?

 

You also say "but they do not download all the updates available to them". Does that mean they download some?

 

I'm afraid I don't know the answer to the very last bit of your question as I don't have an xserve here to look at right now.

[AntonioRocco]

Hi

 

You're not the only one having problems with the 10.6.4 update even though SUS shows it as available and downloaded. Using the Software Update Service normally (ie without a dedicated SU Server) is OK. Flushing the sucatalog index as well as the relevant files does not change anything either.

 

This won't be the first time this has happened and no doubt it won't be the last. As ever there's no 'official' word from Apple and there probably won't be? I remember the 10.6.2 update showing similar symptoms. The 10.5.6 update was the same. It did not 'sort' itself for about 2 weeks as I recall? An important thing you have to remember regarding Apple's SU Service is it requires a lot of patience on occasion. Not definitive in any way but generally when a major revision update is available, the 'packages' that are actually usable on a dedicated SU Server are about 2-3 weeks behind what is normally available at the time the revision was initially released.

 

An alternative way of pushing this update out to all your clients is to manually download the update .dmg on a client/administrative workstation that has ARD installed. If you have ARD installed on your server that would do equally as well. You should be able to select all your client workstations and issue "softwareupdate -i -a" and select the .pkg for the update once you've mounted the .dmg.

 

Antonio Rocco (ACSA)

[ahunter]

Thanks for the advise guys. Just before I left last night I managed to get it working. It seems that when the engineer commisioned our apple network he configured all clients to point to index.sucatalog which I have since found will only find updates relevant for 10.4. Changing this to index-leopard-snowleopard.merged-1.sucatalog has now allowed the clients to see updates relevant to 10.6 including the latest 10.6.4 update. :-)

 

Although this has worked, I am pretty certain I will encounter some future problems as mentioned in Antonio's post.

[Oops_my_bad]

Hi,

 

I am having a similar problem.

 

In my case, My server is 10.6.5, and all my clients are 10.6x (so I am not running a mixed 10.5/10.6 environment).

 

My clients are configured with the default catalog for 10.6, so the catalog URL looks something like:

 

http://osx.domain.internal:8088/index.sucatalog

 

If I oepn this up in Safari I can see the file and its contents. The servername is correct.

 

if I then open up http://osx.domain.internal:8088/index-leopard-snowleopard.merged-1.sucatalog this looks identical.

 

So am I correct in that if I am running a vanilla 10.6 environment my catalog URL should be http://osx.domain.internal:8088/index.sucatalog ?

 

In this configuration, when I run software update the Mac client just says there are no new software updates available, when I know for a fact there are at least 4 (from when connecting directly to apple update)

Thanks

Edited December 15, 2010 by Oops_my_bad

[Oops_my_bad]

Never mind, it was the catalogURL that was wrong

 

Typical Apple... fix one thing and break 10 others