Automatic updates on OS X Leopard

Question

Is it possible to set OS X Leopard to update my system automatically at a specific time, just like Windows does? Right now the Updater randomly pops up when there are updates and I have to manually 'approve' them for download.

Answer 1

You can set up a cron job to do this. Let me find the command to run.

Look up the command softwareupdate and schedule a cron job to run it.

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/maintscripts.html -- Info on cron jobs.

Answer 2

If you go to System Preferences -> Software Update you can schedule how often to run. By default it will do an auto-update check once a week.

Answer 3

As root you can do:

crontab -e

Add this to install updates every Monday at 5PM:

# m  h  dom mon dow   command
  0 17   *   *   1   /usr/sbin/softwareupdate -i -a  >> /dev/null 2>&1