10.8 SUS is not working - Jamf cannot solve this.

[kirkd]

In a last ditch effort to figure out why our internal SUS is not working I am turning to Jamf Nation. I have spent hours in webex sessions with Jamf tech support trying to figure this out. Are there any Mountain Lion Server users out there with SUS working with Casper Suite? If so, please contact me so I can get my internal SUS working. This is one of the main reasons why we purchased this product and so far it has failed miserably.

[Nix4Life]

Hey Kirk;

Many of us understand your frustration. As I'm sure you have searched you can see there are others that are having the same issue. a solution I and many others use is to script it or bake the SUS settings into the base image with this command: defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL "http://yourservername or ip:8088/" .
Also if you go the script route, you can set the computer name, ntp server ,pull down symantec updates. hang in there buddy. Casper is a great product, and when you have a problem, they will help. and you always have us here in the nation

LS

[kirkd]

Hello LSinNY,
Thank you for responding. I have a policy setup with the following command: defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL http://SERVER_IP:8088/catalogs.sucatalog AS you know, this adds an entry in com.apple.softwareupdate.plist to point the client to the server.

We did this because using the Software Update configuration profile setting is apparently broken. The weird thing is that if I point the clients to my SUS server it shows 0 updates. If I remove the entry in the plist and point the client back to the Apple SUS, it will show available updates. I did verify that the same updates are downloaded and enabled on my internal SUS.

Any other ideas on this?

[acdesigntech · Accepted solution]

try using index.sucatalog rather than catalogs.sucatalaog.

Also, I've had mixed results using any of the following SUS paths (as in some work sometimes, others never, etc):

mySUS:8088/index-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.sucatalog
mySUS:8088/contents/catalogs/other/index-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.sucatalog

It seems to depend on if you upgraded your SUS from pre-ML to ML or installed fresh. I installed fresh and have had the most consistent (good) results with index.sucatalog for both 10.6 and 10.8 clients (we skipped over 10.7)

[kirkd]

Hi AC,
Jamf tech support actually had me change index.sucatalog to catalogs.sucatalogs claiming that 10.8 server changed the name of the catalog file to catalogs.sucatalog. The jumpstart tech oringinally set up my SUS server with

mysus:8088/index-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.sucatalog

with zero luck.

I have a mixed bag of client machines ranging from 10.6-10.8. My 10.8 server is a fresh install.

[dwsak]

Not a whole lot of details in the original post but.....

Are you behind a proxy server? We had an issue where part of the jamf binary expects the SUS to be populated in /var/root/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist, and if it's populated in other 'normal' areas (like /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist, as it would be by a profile setting) then the jamf binary won't see the setting.

Not sure what the exact error is you're getting but try populating it in the location mentioned above. Just for consistency, I also populate it through a profile.

[kirkd]

Thank you everyone for the assistance, adding the following CatalogURL in com.apple.softwareupdate did the trick!

defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL http://128.135.240.63:8088/index-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog

Now here is a followup question: can I add this URL to a configuration profile for my 10.7 clients? I tried this in the past with poor results. This would certainly be the preferred method over my current solution of a policy that adds the URL to com.apple.softwareupdate once a week.

[cbrewer]

I'm setting different catalog URL's based on OS. So far, it's working just fine with my 10.8.2 SUS. Here's an example script that I run on everything.

#!/bin/sh

# Set SUS

if [ `sw_vers -productVersion | awk -F. '{ print $2 }'` -eq 8 ]; then
    defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL http://applesus.domain.com/content/catalogs/others/index-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog
fi

if [ `sw_vers -productVersion | awk -F. '{ print $2 }'` -eq 7 ]; then
    defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL http://applesus.domain.com/content/catalogs/others/index-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog
fi

if [ `sw_vers -productVersion | awk -F. '{ print $2 }'` -eq 6 ]; then
    defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL http://applesus.domain.com/content/catalogs/others/index-leopard-snowleopard.merged-1.sucatalog
fi

if [ `sw_vers -productVersion | awk -F. '{ print $2 }'` -eq 5 ]; then
    #defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL http://applesus.domain.com/content/catalogs/others/index-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog
    sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL
fi

Note: 10.8 SUS no longer offers 10.5 updates so I'm just deleting the CatalogURL for those machines.

[jarednichols]

Here's the script I'm using. Works a treat

#!/bin/sh

# Filename: setSUS.sh
# Purpose: Set the Software Update Server for root and all users to the OS-appropriate catalog
# Author: Jared F. Nichols

# Get the OS we're on
OSversion=`sw_vers | grep ProductVersion`

case $OSversion in

*10.7*)
    defaults write /var/root/Library/Preferences/com.apple.softwareupdate CatalogURL http://servername/content/catalogs/others/index-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1_Prod.sucatalog
    defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.softwareupdate CatalogURL http://servername/content/catalogs/others/index-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1_Prod.sucatalog
    echo "Setting SUS to FMRAPPLESUS Lion Branch."
    ;;
*10.8*)
    defaults write /var/root/Library/Preferences/com.apple.softwareupdate CatalogURL http://servername/content/catalogs/others/index-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1_Prod.sucatalog
    defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.softwareupdate CatalogURL http://servername/content/catalogs/others/index-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1_Prod.sucatalog
    echo "Setting SUS to FMRAPPLESUS Mountain Lion Branch."
    ;;
esac