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For everyone who wants an easy way to turn off automatic updates, here is a link to download a tested script that disables: - Apple Software Update - Adobe CS3/CS4 Updater - Microsoft Office 2004/2008 AutoUpdate

http://www.makemacwork.com/disable-automatic-updates.htm

We spent a lot of time working and testing various scripts last week, and this one seems to be working properly on all our test systems when deployed with Casper.

I hope this is useful. We had a lot of fun working on it.

I'm including the resourcekit group in this email too, in case Nick thinks this might something good to include in future kits.

We'd appreciate any feedback on this script. We'll make updates as needed.

~Craig

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John, that's what I'm most proud of in this script.

You are correct. We found that deploying the "softwareupdate -- schedule off" command via Casper only applies the change to the root user by default.

This script uses sudo to run the softwareupdate commands while masquerading as all the other users on a machine. Which lets you push out this (and other commands) system wide.

That technique also applies to Office and Adobe automatic updaters.

It took us a fair bit of testing to come up with this technique. (Note: We ls command to get a list of all the directories in /Users, so I can imagine some unique environments where this technique might not apply.)

Read Jordan's post at our technical blog, Make Mac Work. He's done a nice job writing up the full technique in detail:

http://www.makemacwork.com/disable-automatic-updates.htm

~Craig

PS> I like an earlier suggestion to incorporate those changes to the new user template as well -- we'll have to incorporate that into a future update.

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