10.9 local Software Update Server not found

We are seeing this and we have NOT upgraded to Server 3.0. We upgraded two of our computers (Mac Pro, MBP) to Mavericks and they will no longer update from the SUS. If we reset the preferences to see Apple's servers, all is well.

I think the evidence will show something did change in Mavericks, but the question right now is : what?

We are seeing this in our environment as well. We had an apple Software update server running and providing updates to about 35 macs with varying OS X versions.

We upgraded 3 of our IT mac book pros to test Mavericks.

• First problem that surfaced, we had to update our Apple Remote Desktop.

  Then we could at least remote to the server

• Then all of the Mavericks machines would fail to get updates with the error "Can't load data from the Software Update server. (servername)"
• We upgraded our Server to Mavericks. Clients still wont update from the SUS.
• We purchased the new "Server" for $20 on the Server and updated the configuration and turned back on the SUS role on the server. Still broken.

Come on Apple. We know you don't care about the enterprise, but this is totally a pain for those of us who manage groups of macs in the workplace. Please fix this.

Another option, at least for the time being until Apple fixes the root cause of the issue, is to use

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL http://SW.DOMAIN.ORG:8088/content/catalogs/others/index-mountainlion-lion-snowle opard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog

I have verified that this does indeed work on an OS X 10.9 Mavericks machine.

I can verify Webguy's solution. It would appear the URL for the sucatalog file is modified slightly in Mavericks. Anyway, it does work. Break out your Terminal and go nuts.

UPDATE : I forgot to mention Webguy's URL has a space in it. You should remove the space in snowleopard to get it to work if you are using copy & paste.

Message was edited by: Buster Blocker

I went to the index.sucatalog URL using safari and got a 404 error, so I did some digging around in the server directories and noted that index.sucatalog does not exist.

but catalogs.sucatalog does..

going to that URL does provide a page.

so try http://yourhost.domain:8088/catalogs.sucatalog

That gets rid of the software update client erroring out, but locally none of my machines will update from my server yet. I still have to go direct to apple. But this is why the URL itself was failing.

I'm not seeing any mavericks reference in the XML of the page output. Something is half baked in this version of server for sure.

I even manually ran the software update server update app and let that run hoping maybe it would create a mavericks update list.. To no avail..

This is a workaround:
https://gist.github.com/erikng/7140045

Did submit a bugreport to Apple

How did you tell your client computers to start getting their updates directly from Apple rather than depending on your local Update Server?

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4069

To point the unmanaged client computer back to the Apple Software Update server, use the following command:

sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL

Thank you! I didn't have much luck with the other solutions presented here, so this seemed like the best way to go. If I might impose one more time.... How do I reverse the process and get it pointing back to the local update server. I assume sooner or later Apple will fix this.

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL http://su.example.com:8088/index.sucatalog

Replace su.example.com with the FQDN of your macserver.

Hi. SoftwareUpdateEnabler does a nice job of setting the update server. I too am having this problem. It was working fine about 2 days ago but yesterday it stopped it working. Any ideas? Has the URL changed perhaps?

webguy

THIS FIXES THE ISSUE!!

THANK YOU!!