munki VS autopkg

The Demo setup is super simple to follow. When I migrated our Mac server to a new machine, I moved the repo folder and just followed the guide. Took me an afternoon, so imagine a few days tops for someone who has never used it before. We also have autopkgr feeding app updates into Munki each week, but if ABM and Jamf is close, you could just do manual imports of what you want into Munki.

Munki client will try 5 different ways to get the manifest, https://github.com/munki/munki/wiki/Default-Manifest-Resolution

From what I remember, munki doesn’t use the built in python, instead it bundles it’s own. What version of munki are you running? If it’s less than 5.5 consider upgrading munki before moving forward. https://github.com/munki/munki/releases/tag/v5.5.0 Bumped the Python version to 3.9.5 (from 3.9.4)

You can create a nopkg. https://github.com/munki/munki/wiki/nopkgs

You can try https://github.com/munki/munki We used to use it quite a bit.

> sudo managedsoftwareupdate Managed Software Update Tool Copyright 2010-2021 The Munki Project https://github.com/munki/munki Starting... Performing preflight tasks... WARNING: Skipping execution of preflight due to insecure file permissions. Error: /usr/local/munki/preflight is not secure! owner does not match munki process! Checking for available updates... Unable to register this device: internalError ERROR: Unexpected error in updatecheck: # [TRUNCATED STACK TRACE] File "/usr/local/munki/middleware_simplemdm.py", line 15, in process_request_options raise Exception("Device is unenrolled from SimpleMDM") Exception: Device is unenrolled from SimpleMDM

Munki (Managed Software Center, pointed at https repository) https://www.munki.org/munki/

To get around this there are two options. 1. Use the DEP package - https://github.com/munki/munki/releases/download/v5.6.2/munkitools_DEP-5.6.2.4398.pkg. Any of the DEP packages in the releases page should work but might as well grab the latest. I can’t find the link at the moment but I believe this just loads the daemons on the postinstall script.

I’d recommend you look into AutoPkg (https://github.com/autopkg/autopkg). It can do exactly what you ask - check the repo for new releases, and download them. It can even package them up if needed, or customise the package for you. Depending on the MDM you use, and/out your scripting ability, you could even have it upload the package to the MDM.

AutoPkg (Terminal app, takes recipes from GitHub to build packages) https://github.com/autopkg/autopkg

Something fancier would be setting up an autopkg build box a + munki server to deploy applications like a real macadmin.

Autopkg https://github.com/autopkg/autopkg

If anyone comes across this with the same question I found a helpful utility is autopkg. https://github.com/autopkg/autopkg Instead of a simple notification, I created a daily job that runs an autopkg update on selected apps I care about and adds it to my Testing Manifest Munki Repo. The Manager Software Center app notifies me when a package has an update the next time the client checks in.