Issue or symptom
An Xserve without a display connected to it ("headless") may not receive Software Update notifications. In this case, no available updates are listed in Software Update.
Solution
Use one of the following workarounds.
- Use the softwareupdate command-line tool in Terminal to list and install updates.
For more information about softwareupdate, type "man softwareupdate" in Terminal, or refer to the Command Line Administration documentation here.
-
Use Server Admin, instead, to check for and install updates.
- Create a launchd job to automate the process. For more information about launchd and why it's preferred over cron, see Getting Started with launchd.
- Create a cron job to automate the process. You can find more information about cron jobs in this article or via these Terminal commands:
man 8 cron
man 1 crontab
man 5 crontab