The software patching configuration built into most operating systems is configured so all that a user has to do is open a box at home, join the network and start using the computer right away. As environments grow from homes to small offices and then small offices grow into enterprises, at some point software updates and patches need to be managed centrally. Yosemite Server (OS X Server 3), as with its OS X Server predecessors has a Software Update service. The service in the Server app is known as Software Update and from the command line is known as swupdate. The Software Update service, by default, stores each update in the /var/db/swupd directory. The…
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Randomizing the Mac OS X Software Update Server
I’ve had a few instances where there was no way to setup round robin DNS or a load balancer and we were looking to alternate between a bunch of software update servers. In order to do so, I’ve written a quick shell script to do so. Here it is, in pieces, so it makes sense. The following is a quick script to pull a URL from a random list of servers: #!/bin/bash Sus=”http://swupd.krypted.com:8088 http://sus.krypted.com:8088 http://sus1.krypted.com:8088 http://sus2.krypted.com:8088 http://sus3.krypted.com:8088 http://sus4.krypted.com:8088 http://sus5.krypted.com:8088 http://sus6.krypted.com:8088 http://sus7.krypted.com:8088 http://sus8.krypted.com:8088 http://sus9.krypted.com:8088 http://sus10.krypted.com:8088″ sus=($Sus) num_sus=${#sus[*]} echo -n ${sus[$((RANDOM%num_sus))]} exit 0 This script would simply write to the screen one of the software update servers that we’ve loaded up into…