Terminal Tips: Install software updates from the command line

This + 'dsh' is a godsend on a cluster....

There is a man page for softwareupdate. This describes additional options, such as selecting specific updates and ignoring others. With awk and a shell script, or perhaps an applescript, you could be very specific about which updates to install in the middle of the night when you're asleep.

Nice! And it saved me from having to restart my computer (that just restarted this morning) just to update iTunes and Safari.

If you want to reboot after installing, just try the following:

sudo softwareupdate -i -a;reboot

I just updated 50 Macs with this command using Remote Desktop. Here is what you do.
Select your Macs in the list.
Click Unix
Enter in softwareupdate -i -a
Make the login user as root.

Then set back and relax. I have been waiting for this tip and it has just saved me hours as a system admin.

Thanks TUAW!!!

WillGonz

I believe there is also the advantage of not having to click through all the EULAs (if any) but I couldn't say for sure.

You can also use this via cron, to run your updates overnight, rather than randomly interrupting you during the day.

Just some reasons why.

Some updates will pop-up a license agreement, to prevent that set the shell environment variable "command_line_install" to 1, for example:

export command_line_install=1

before running the softwareupdate command. You can read about this in Apple's Command Line documentation for Tiger Server or Leopard Server.

You can avoid piping the administrator's password by adding the following line to /etc/sudoers (using visudo command):

Administrator ALL=PASSWD:ALL, NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/softwareupdate, /sbin/reboot, /usr/bin/pmset

(assumes Administrator is the user that runs softwareupdate and reboot commands)

I've created a shell script "SUinstall" that handles all the tasks:

#!/bin/bash

export COMMAND_LINE_INSTALL=1
sudo /usr/sbin/softwareupdate -i -a
sudo /sbin/reboot

So I run "ssh adminstrator@remoteHost SUinstall" to install updates and reboot on the remote computer named "remoteHost"

StPaddy, this is one of the included template Unix commands in ARD (under Miscellaneous). You have the option to list updates that are available, just download them or download and install.

The GUI version of Software Update couldn't sucessfully install the latest security update. I just tried the update from within Terminal as described above and the update installed sucessfully.

Thanks for the tip.

This is indeed a handy command--I just tried it using ARD and it works fine as long as you do the old trick of piping the root password into sudo.

The only bummer is that there doesn't seem to be a switch in the command for rebooting when it's complete.