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Helpful answers
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Jan 25, 2015 4:32 PM in response to HenrySby Leopardus,Hi Henry,
Have you had a look at this?
Have fun
Leo
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Jan 26, 2015 5:42 AM in response to HenrySby John Lockwood,Apple's Software Update Server only provides updates for Apple Mac software. It does not provide updates for Mac Applications via the AppStore nor does it provide any updates for iOS devices.
Apple's Caching Server works differently. When a Mac or iOS device on your network requests an update from either the Mac AppStore or the iOS AppStore this will then be 'cached' on the server so that next time a device requests the same update it is available locally.
The URL for a local Software Update Server would be of the form
http://server.domain.com:8088/index.sucatalog
This would be written on a client Mac as follows
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL http://server.domain.com:8088/index.sucatalog
It would be read on a client Mac as follows
defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL
Note: Older versions of OS X had a version of the defaults command which did not like you including the file extension of the plist file so in the past the following would fail.
defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist CatalogURL
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Jan 26, 2015 10:59 AM in response to John Lockwoodby Leopardus,★HelpfulThanks John Lockwood,
Just saw that the link to the support document was not there! Thanks for helping out and keeping my back clean here.
Macs are fun
Leo
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Feb 1, 2015 6:45 AM in response to Leopardusby HenryS,★HelpfulThanks to both of you, however my problem is still not solved:
- The Server I use is based on a private (not public internet) local server, without a www. address. As a result, the link should be a smb:// location. The setting given will not work to locate the files.
- When I locate the server (smb://ML-server._smb._tcp.local:8088/index.sucatalog) it doesn't work. Not sure about the port number or file locator for OS X.
- When App store is used in OS X 10.10.2 to locate updates, on the SECOND press to update, I get an error (bad URL). Either way, one press or two, no updates!
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Feb 1, 2015 6:55 AM in response to HenrySby John Lockwood,The Software Update Server function only supports http access by clients. (Technically it also supports https but there is not much point to using https.) Your own personal SUS server can be on your own private LAN and does not have to be accessible publicly, in fact it would be very rare and unusual to make it available publicly and of no benefit since Apple's own SUS server is already available as a public server.
You can run your own http server for SUS on your internal LAN and the SUS module built-in to Apple's Server software does this automatically for you. If you use the third-party Reposado software instead which has various advantages then this does require setting up a web-server for it, I use Apache.
Note: The Server you use internally for your SUS does not have to be called www.domain.com it can be anything.domain.com or anything.private
If you mean you need to provide updates to a network that has no connection to the Internet at all then this is also possible. What you would have to do would be to have a machine which does have Internet access and have it setup using either the SUS module built-in to Server.app or use Reposado. This machine would then download the updates. You would then need to copy the directory containing the updates to a server on your private non-Internet connected LAN and make it available there. The clients would be able to download from this private SUS but in order to add new updates you would need to keep copying from the other server.
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Mar 23, 2015 9:28 AM in response to John Lockwoodby theFerret,Having it (or several cascading) public instead of on LAN or both LAN and public could give the benefit of controlling updates, e g holding on to an update until you think it's been out in the wild long enough to be safe for your clients (probably with SUS server settings pushed via some sort of MDM)? With Apple's servers used by the clients all updates go out to the clients as soon as the user updates.
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by John Lockwood,Mar 23, 2015 9:40 AM in response to theFerret
John Lockwood
Mar 23, 2015 9:40 AM
in response to theFerret
Level 6 (9,349 points)
Servers EnterprisetheFerret wrote:
Having it (or several cascading) public instead of on LAN or both LAN and public could give the benefit of controlling updates, e g holding on to an update until you think it's been out in the wild long enough to be safe for your clients (probably with SUS server settings pushed via some sort of MDM)? With Apple's servers used by the clients all updates go out to the clients as soon as the user updates.
In terms of controlling updates by far the best option is to use Reposado instead of Apple's SUS module in their Server.app.
Reposado not only allows you to create multiple 'branches' e.g. a testing branch and released branch, but it also allows you to keep old updates which you might want to still make available and which otherwise Apple would delete, for example keeping an old version of iTunes available because you are not ready to upgrade to a newer version.
You would point a 'test' Mac to the test branch, and normal Macs to the released branch, these branches are basically additional catalogs and each can different enabled/disabled lists.
You could run Reposado on a Mac server, I use a Linux virtual machine but I have previously used a Mac server and a lot of people still do. All you have to do is make sure the Apple one is not running at the same time on the same computer. If you do chose to use Reposado you might also want to look at Margarita which is another piece of software which sets up another web server specifically for administering Reposado. (Otherwise you need to use the command line to administer Reposado.)