Managing Mac OS Updates in an Enterprise?

An anonymous reader asks: "What's the best way to manage updates for an office of about 150 Macs of various models with different releases of Mac OS X installed? I would assume the solution involves Apple Remote Desktop Administrator which makes it possible to install updates on client machines without interrupting the user — but then the question becomes how do you keep track of which updates to install? Does Apple have some page squirreled away that lists updates they've released in chronological order with the ability to filter based on OS version and model? Is there an RSS feed or mailing list that announces new updates? For the uninitiated, ARD Admin only lets you install specified packages, so you have to download the updates manually from Apple's website, then queue the packages to be installed on a particular set of machines. This problem would be far simpler if it were possible to simply instruct client machines to run Software Update and install all available updates, or even better, if Apple included automatic update functionality within the OS, a la Windows XP."

Comments

Mac OS X Server

[Hes Nikke]

um... have you read about any of apples solutions besides ARD? how 'bout this or this?

i'm not sure i can put it any more bluntly O_o

btw... first post!(?)

Re:Mac OS X Server

[Graff]

Automatic updates are also very simple to set up with the softwareupdate tool located at:

/usr/sbin/softwareupdate

It has a man page and everything. You can use this to set up a cron job or whatever to do the updates automatically.

There's more info on this at Mike's Mac OS X Management Software and Tips and at Apple's Knowledgebase

Macs DO have automatic update

[athempel]

Read all about it.

And if you'd like to script it, take a look at the man page for "softwareupdate".

Mac OS X Updates

[RAMMS EIN]

The OS ships with an update tool that notifies you of available updates. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to take into account what software you have installed (it keeps telling me there's an update for iTunes, even though I don't have iTunes installed), and it only updates the software that ships with the system - anything you install separately will have to be updated separately.

This is one of my main gripes with OS X, in fact. On Debian and Ubuntu, I have a great package manager that automatically takes care of dependencies, and keeping software up to date is as simple as apt-get update && apt-get upgrade (with graphical front ends available for those who want them). Having to manually hunt down dependencies or updates is just a pain in the behind, and can significantly increase the maintenance cost of a system.