What sucatalog are you referencing?

I'm just using index.sucatalog- that's what Casper uses when setting the SUSs server.

http://susserver.com:8443/index.sucatalog

I think you'll find your 10.8 clients are receiving that catalog url with a space at the end. Try setting the catalog url via managed preferences and see if that solves it.

I believe it's a bug.

We use:
http://server.fqdn.dom:8088/index-mountainlion-lion-snowleopard-leopard.merged-1.sucatalog

Try this, you will most likely see the space mentioned earlier..

lisad$ defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist | grep CatalogURL
    CatalogURL = "http://yourserver.yourdomain:8088/index.sucatalog ";

We use a script for applying software updates, discussed extensively in other posts.. I added the following regex to the perl script to remove the trailing space and didn't want to use MCX.

my $CATALOGURL=`defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL`;
$CATALOGURL =~ s/^s+|s+$//g;
system "defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL $CATALOGURL";


my $ROOTCATALOGURL=`defaults read /var/root/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL`;
$ROOTCATALOGURL =~ s/^s+|s+$//g;
system "defaults write /var/root/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL $ROOTCATALOGURL";

JAMF gave us this defect id: D-003070

Yeah, I'v tried all these options and so far no luck.
I can use the default read cmd and it returns the correct address, but still goes to apple.
I input the value manually to avoid the end space- still goes to apple.
I'm running out of options and ideas.

OK, I'v gotten a bit closer on this. The software-update plist in /var/root seems to be causing some problems with the troubleshooting.

What happens is tat if I use the write defaults to manually input the server address, it works, but if I use Casper to set the SUS, it doesn't. Its that nasty 'space' at the end of the URL.

I have a good number of SUS dist point across the country, so I'd need to be able to dynamically scope these to those users. I'v been doing it by Building/Network Segment. But obviously I can't use the Casper feature to set sus.
So how would be an efficient way to do it that doesn't involve manually scoping policies to change it?