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Mac OS - pre-configuring Autoupdate

QC

We have quite a number of Macs (not surprising at a university) but no official Mac support. Nevertheless we offer Sophos for Macs (in a downloadable .zip archive).  

When Sophos is installed on a Mac on our network it connects to the management server from where it gets the update policy (the CIDs contain the correct mrinit.conf for RMS to work). Of course this does not work if the Mac is used at home. For windows PCs putting sauconf.xml placed in the appropriate directory does the trick. There are some articles in the knowledgebase but usually a Mac is required with which you can configure the CID (if I understand correctly). I believe no magic is actually involved and the configuration is stored somewhere in a .plist file (XML format). I suspect that the catalogues are involved and configcid.exe does not support a CID for OSX.

Or is there a "simple" way to pre-configure autoupdate (even if it's unsupported)? sau.plist looks suspicous  :smileywink:

Christian

:518


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    jelockwood wrote:

    The main if not only difference is that I am installing Sophos without actually being logged in as a user. If you use Sophos Installer.app by itself this is a GUI installer and has to be run from inside an active login, if you use the Sophos Cloud installer the same applies. As a reminder I have 'wrapped' the Sophos Installer.app inside an Apple installer package.

    As I don't have a Windows Server I cannot test using the installer package created and maintained by Sophos Enterprise Console but that (last time I saw it) was an Apple installer package and one could test deploying it to a new Mac via ARD or similar to replicate a similar situation to mine. I am using Munki to auto deploy and install my Sophos (Apple) installer package, this takes place while at the login screen with no user actually logged in. ARD, Munki, Casper, and others that support Apple installer packages can all do installs without a user needing to be logged in.

    I only see this in Yosemite, it does not happen in Mavericks.

    Faceless installation should work (we definitely designed it to be compatible witht that style of deployment) but I'll have someone look into it more deeply. Thanks for the pointers, it definitely helps.

    BTW the version of the software managed by Sophos Enterprise Console now uses the same installer that the stand alone package is using. We switched because Apple no longer supports signing of the MPKG format (they are correct by saying it was deprected a long time ago). We continued to use that format (rather than a simple PKG) because we rely on the ability to have the SEC system glue together the software + detection data + RMS configuration, and only an MPKG could do that. We now put the files into a separate folder next to the app, and we independently validate the contents during install.

    jelockwood wrote:

    On a slightly different topic, is there a commandline tool in Sophos SAV9 that can force a check for updates? It would be nice to immediately follow an install with a check for updates so as to ensure it immediately is up-to-date rather than having to wait 60 minutes for this to happen automatically.

    /usr/bin/SophosUpdate

    This tool has been around for a while but got a major overhaul in 9.2. It used to flake out a bit when AutoUpdate itself was updated and could appear like it failed, but it actually just got disconnected.

    The software will attempt to do its own update immediately, but there isn't any harm in asking for it to do so again from your script. You should probably give the system ~30 seconds to stabilize after the installer has completed before kicking off the update. In theory the installer is doing that for you, but sometimes very poky systems take longer.

    :54307
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  • 0
    jelockwood wrote:

    The main if not only difference is that I am installing Sophos without actually being logged in as a user. If you use Sophos Installer.app by itself this is a GUI installer and has to be run from inside an active login, if you use the Sophos Cloud installer the same applies. As a reminder I have 'wrapped' the Sophos Installer.app inside an Apple installer package.

    As I don't have a Windows Server I cannot test using the installer package created and maintained by Sophos Enterprise Console but that (last time I saw it) was an Apple installer package and one could test deploying it to a new Mac via ARD or similar to replicate a similar situation to mine. I am using Munki to auto deploy and install my Sophos (Apple) installer package, this takes place while at the login screen with no user actually logged in. ARD, Munki, Casper, and others that support Apple installer packages can all do installs without a user needing to be logged in.

    I only see this in Yosemite, it does not happen in Mavericks.

    Faceless installation should work (we definitely designed it to be compatible witht that style of deployment) but I'll have someone look into it more deeply. Thanks for the pointers, it definitely helps.

    BTW the version of the software managed by Sophos Enterprise Console now uses the same installer that the stand alone package is using. We switched because Apple no longer supports signing of the MPKG format (they are correct by saying it was deprected a long time ago). We continued to use that format (rather than a simple PKG) because we rely on the ability to have the SEC system glue together the software + detection data + RMS configuration, and only an MPKG could do that. We now put the files into a separate folder next to the app, and we independently validate the contents during install.

    jelockwood wrote:

    On a slightly different topic, is there a commandline tool in Sophos SAV9 that can force a check for updates? It would be nice to immediately follow an install with a check for updates so as to ensure it immediately is up-to-date rather than having to wait 60 minutes for this to happen automatically.

    /usr/bin/SophosUpdate

    This tool has been around for a while but got a major overhaul in 9.2. It used to flake out a bit when AutoUpdate itself was updated and could appear like it failed, but it actually just got disconnected.

    The software will attempt to do its own update immediately, but there isn't any harm in asking for it to do so again from your script. You should probably give the system ~30 seconds to stabilize after the installer has completed before kicking off the update. In theory the installer is doing that for you, but sometimes very poky systems take longer.

    :54307
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