Software Update Server not working - Firewall?

Well, I hate to hear that you finally reinstalled. That is a major pain unless you are just testing. I have been there, bro.

I had my 10.5.5 SUS operating well but only for 10.4 clients. Go figure. My 10.5 clients reported that there were no updates needed. I am in the process of getting the downloads from Apple again after purging out my previous usr/share/swupd/html folder. It takes some time to "Initialize" the RecordsArray after blowing all the files away.

1. stop the SUS server and also remove it from the services list in Server Admin
2. $ sudo rm -rf /usr/share/swupd/html - removes the files
3. restart the Mac
4. put the service back and start it
5. check for swupd_syncd process running, if it is, it is starting to download from Apple again.
6. $ sudo serveradmin settings swupdate - will tell you how things are going
7. once the RecordsArray is done initializing, you will get your list back in Server Admin and you can hit the copy button.
9. Since the stupid GUI gives you no feedback, and the terminal command above will output all those messy numbers, you can watch your Activity Monitor app for net traffic to see how your DL is going.

Now that I am back where I was three hours ago, maybe I can get my 10.5 systems to update!

Looks like I spent time getting back to where I started. I have the server running but my

grep swupd /etc/swupd/com.apple.server.swupdate.plist > ~/Desktop/update_list.txt

yields a blank document. I have 13 GB of updates synced from Apple, so that part is good. It appears that the plist file is toast? The plist file does contain what appears to be a full list of info about all the updates. Much too large to post here, but it looks normal, I guess. The grep outputs nothing but a blank txt.

So, my current issue is that none of my clients can see the updates themselves- in practical terms, the client computers are not getting the "recommendation" to update specific items. I know there are several updates due because when I connect to Apple it shows several.

Should I trash the plist file or is there some other detail I am missing?
What step do I need to take to provide more info to you guys?
-n

One more detail:

http://192.168.3.125:8088/index.sucatalog

This yields the full list. No issue here either.

I am just using internal IP for this service. It is just so that computers that I repair here in the shop can get their updates faster so I don't need a public IP or fqdn

I had this exact same issue. I could browse to http://192.168.x.x:8088/index.sucatalog from the client and see all the updates, but when actually doing the SU the client would not find any updates ("Your computer is up to date", even though it was a clean 10.5 install.

Here is what fixed my problem: http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?p=506471&posted=1#post506471

Basically, on the sever that is running SUS, open up the following file:

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/Preferences.plist

At the end of this plist file you will find a entry that looks like this below:

<dict>
<key>ComputerName</key>
<string> server_name</string>
<key>ComputerNameEncoding</key>
<integer>0</integer>
<key>HostName</key>
<string> myFQDN.com</string>
</dict>

Make sure all your name and DNS information match completely. My server had left out part of the FQDN, and when I changed it to the full name it fixed that problem.

So for you, if it's just like my setup, you want the computer name to be the same as the FQDN, just without the ".local".

I had changed my servers name in the file sharing part of system preferences, and hence when looking at the plist the computer name was the newname while the FQDN still had the original name from the install of the server.

So now, today, I for the first time have my client updating locally from my local server.

Message was edited by: Prograham (I bolded the parts that should match)

OK, I will give it a shot. Looking at my plist file right now, it all looks fine.

I have to say, the first line in any of these OSX server books should say- name your server exactly what it will always be named right at the install or face the consequences!

I could not agree with you more.

Well, that didn't fix my issue. There must be something else. I have a functional SUS running on a Mac Pro 10.5 server and the /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist has just the basic "servername" and "servername.local" in the appropriate slots in the plist file.

My non-functional server did have a discrepancy that I corrected, but it still won't give me update notification on the client machine when the Mac Pro SUS does. I suppose I have to pick the file apart for other things that might be off.

YoYo, did you bind the clients to the server using "directory utility" found in the clients utilities folder? (mind you, it's "directory Utility", not just plain "directory").

And, do you have the client machine or client user setup in WGM on the server to be managed for software updates?

Message was edited by: Prograham