Usually when you want to monitor the status of the Mac system updates; it becomes a complicated affair. Since, there is no proper mechanism to fetch the information on status of the patch for the designated systems. At one point it becomes havoc because of the manual procedure; it consumes lot of time and efforts, and by this process you cannot gain much.
There is a need for a concrete solution and an easy way to figure out the status of the systems. Understanding this Desktop Central has crafted a unique solution. The given script can help you to perform following actions:
1) Scan and fetch status reports
2) Patch deployment
You should have a common root password to perform the above tasks.
Scan and Status reports:
By following the script you can scan the designated systems and access the reports to analyze the status updates from a centralized location, which means you will have in-hand information about the systems and the reports helps you to take a better decision.
Patch Deployment:
You can perform the patch deployment from a centralized location for the designated systems i.e. whenever Mac bulletin releases new patches, it can be deployed automatically. Without looking back administrator can scan and deploy patches effortlessly while he can focus on the other business.
Note:
Script will not download any updates from the apple web site rather it only invokes mac built-in software update process to perform required tasks.
Below are the steps to be followed in order to perform the Scanning and Deploying:
Download the attached zip file Mac Patch Deployment and extract the folder.
The Extracted folder has the following files:
- start.pl – script to perform software update activities.
- computernames.txt – Remote computer name or ip address should be entered as line by line.
Execution steps:
Step-1: Open terminal window
Step-2: Give the command line
Note: If you execute the below command line without an <option>, it lists all the options to execute the script.
Once the above step is completed; it prompts for a password.
perl start.pl <option>
Options are,
Scan – Computers are only scanned
ia – Computers are scanned and all available updates are installed
ir – Computers are scanned and only recommended updates are installed
Give Mac specific updates name such as MacOSXUpd10.7.4-10.7.4, AirPortUtility-6.1
Example:
perl start.pl scan
perl start.pl ia
perl start.pl ir
This option is used to install a specific updates. This update name:
perl start.pl MacOSXUpd10.7.4-10.7.4
This option is used to install multiple updates:
perl start.pl MacOSXUpd10.7.4-10.7.4,AirPortUtility-6.1
>>Once the above step is completed; it prompts for a password.
We have more than one administrator account on our Macs. How do we indicate which account the password is for?
This script uses user name called “root” to perform all kind of mac scanning & installation. As we mentioned in the blog post, to use this script, password for root account must be same for all mac computers and there is no option to give any administrator username in the script. Kindly let me know if you have any further queries.