I'm having problems updating to OS X 10.10.4

First, you should do this:

Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions - Yosemite, Mavericks, Mountain Lion or Lion

Boot to the Recovery HD:

Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears.

Repair

When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility and press the Continue button. After Disk Utility loads select the Macintosh HD entry from the the left side list. Click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If Disk Utility reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit Disk Utility and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.

Now, install the Combo updater. If this doesn't work for you then do this:

Reinstalling OS X Without Erasing the Drive

Boot to the Recovery HD: Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears.

Reinstalling OS X Without Erasing the Drive

Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions: Upon startup select Disk Utility from the main menu. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions as follows.

When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility and press the Continue button. After Disk Utility loads select the Macintosh HD entry from the the left side list. Click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If Disk Utility reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit Disk Utility and return to the main menu.

Reinstall OS X: Select Reinstall OS X and click on the Continue button.

Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible because it is three times faster than wireless.

Alternatively, see:

Reinstall OS X Without Erasing the Drive

Choose the version you have installed now:

OS X Yosemite- Reinstall OS X

OS X Mavericks- Reinstall OS X

OS X Mountain Lion- Reinstall OS X

OS X Lion- Reinstall Mac OS X

Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet

if possible because it isthree times faster than wireless.

Read the instructions. The Recovery HD is installed when OS X is installed if you use Lion or later. If, for some reason, your drive does not have the Recovery HD on it and your computer is from 2011 or later then you can use Network Recovery:

Install OS X Using Internet Recovery

Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.

Boot to the Internet Recovery HD:

Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND-OPTION- R keys until a globe appears on the screen. Wait patiently - 15-20 minutes - until the Recovery main menu appears.

1. Select Disk Utility from the Recovery main menu and click on the Continue button.
2. After Disk Utility loads select the Macintosh HD entry from the the left side list. Click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If Disk Utility reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit Disk Utility and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.

Now, you can either reinstall OS X or erase the drive and install a fresh copy of OS X. Note that the later will erase the drive and all your files. So make a backup first.

Depends. See Computers that can be upgraded to use OS X Internet Recovery.

If you have no Recovery HD installed then that usually means you cloned the system you are using but not with Disk Utility. Or you did not use the COMMAND-R keyboard combo at startup:

Boot Using Command+R keys:

1. Restart the computer.

2. Immediately after the chime press and hold down the

"COMMAND" and the "R" keys together.

3. Release the keys when the Utilities Menu appears.

FWIW, after you return home you may want to think about creating a USB flash drive OS X installer before your next road trip. You will need a download of the full OS X installer (5.3 GBs or so.) You can then create the flash drive installer:

Make Your Own Mavericks, Mountain/Lion Installer

After downloading the installer you must first save the Install Mac OS X application. After the installer downloads DO NOT click on the Install button. Go to your Applications folder and make a copy of the installer. Move the copy into your Downloads folder. Now you can click on the Install button. You must do this because the installer deletes itself automatically when it finishes installing.

2. Get a USB flash drive that is at least 8 GBs. Prep this flash drive as follows:

1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your flash drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the leftside list. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
3. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list.
4. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to an hour depending upon the flash drive size.

Use DiskMaker X 4.0b4 to put your installer clone onto the USB flash drive. Wait for the process to complete which will take quite some time.

should I do anything before attempting to run this once it downloads?

Yes: back up your data, if you don't already have a current backup.