Big Sur upgrade

agrant
New Contributor III

Hi folks

We're looking to ugprade our macos devices to Big Sur. We're just finishing some testing & making sure all apps are going to be compatible etc. All of our users don't have admin rights as standard, although we have a method to elevate through self-service. We've noticed that when users go through the software update to upgrade, it prompts for admin credentials. This is fine for the moment whilst we're still testing - But is there a way to let users approve the upgrade without having to give them admin? Or are you guys pushing the upgrade through JAMF as opposed to waiting for users to opt to upgrade themselves when it suits them?

Any help appreciated. Cheers

3 REPLIES 3

mm2270
Legendary Contributor III

You should be looking at a scripted method of upgrading, such as this: https://github.com/kc9wwh/macOSUpgrade
The above method does not require the macOS Installer app to be unrestricted to work, nor does it require admin credentials since it kicks off the process as root for the logged in user. You can follow the instructions in the script to ensure that the installer app is already downloaded or have a separate policy to download it, and then place it all in Self Service for users to kick off.

Edit: Just to note on one thing - I haven't actually used the above script with Big Sur... yet. I plan to test it out soon, so we'll see how it works. It's possible it might need a few adjustments but I think it should still work.

agrant
New Contributor III

Thanks for pointing us in the right direction. We'll get some testing done.

Cheers

john_sherrod
Contributor II

I'm planning to do a separate post on this, and I keep tweaking my process a bit. Ha. But I'm currently employing three policies. The first one just copies the Big Sur installer to the Mac's Applications folder. I then have a policy in Self Service that, when the user clicks on the Self Service button, quits Self Service and launches a Jamf Helper window with some information about the update. If the user hits Ok, it then triggers a third policy that uses the startosinstall binary to kick off the update.