Software Update server

Gwyn,

My apologizes, these commands should be run on the server
sudo swupdctl start
sudo swupdctl stop

When I set up my update server a few weeks ago, I got the latest list from the Server Admin window, selected the updates that I wanted to have and wanted to share, made sure that port 8080 was open on my firewall and started the service. It took a while for the updates to all download from Apple.

On A client, in Terminal, I ran:

softwareupdate -l

to make sure they were up to date enough to use the limited updates that I have on my update server. I then ran (I work as root):

defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL http://myserver:8088/

and veryfied /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate with:

plutil -convert xml1 /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate
cat /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate

then ran:

softwareupdate -l

again. This time it will report that it's contacting the new update server:

softwareupdate -l
Software Update Tool
Copyright 2002-2005 Apple

2007-09-26 18:48:13.261 softwareupdate[13714] Loading CatalogURL http://myserver:8088/index.sucatalog
No new software available.

Roger

The server does populate itself with many things that you don't select. If forks a special process for the downloads, I forget what exactly it's called, but I believe it shows up with:

ps auxwww | egrep -i update


Roger