Software Update Server Mirrors

[jeffburg]

I think its amazing that Apple's Software Update servers for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard are still up and running but unfortunately, they are no longer going for 10.3, 10.2, 10.1, etc. And while it is possible to just run the Combo Update for your version of Mac OS X and get mostly up to date, that doesn't update everything. There are always misc smaller updates like iTunes, Quicktime, Security updates, etc that are not included in the combo update. Does anyone know if anyone has created mirrors of these servers for use on older systems?

If no, is there anything we can do to mirror the 10.4/10.5/10.6 versions to protect them before their inevitable shutdown?

 

[fehervaria]

Are they available on the Wayback Machine?
If yes, you need to create a proxy script to reroute the original Apple URL to those files on Wayback Machine.

If you do that, please, share the proxy script.

Otherwise, I'm afraid it is not allowed to re-host these files because of Apple's legal properties.

 

[jeffburg]

Yeah. I suppose you are right. No one has done this out of fear of legal problems. But Apple always provided software update server with Mac OS X server so companies could host updates for their own Macs. Not to say that it’s legal to host these files. It is most likely probably not allowed by the Apple license.

that said, nothing to stop me from using a Mac is X 10.5 or 10.6 server from creating this mirror for myself.

i also found this open source project that replicates the software update server software with python scripts.

I might explore. https://github.com/wdas/reposado/blob/main/docs/getting_started.md

 

[jeffburg]

An update here. I got 10.6 Server running and it turns out that the file these Software Update Server instances connect to on Apple's servers now returns a 404... so Software Update Server no longer works :-/

I guess I will have to try that reposado project I linked above :-/

 

[jeffburg]

An update here! It works!!!

If you didn't know, Apple shut off the Software Update Servers for Mac OS X 10.0 through 10.3. Luckily the servers for 10.4 and above still work. But I am worried those may be shut off as part of the TLS Apocalypse. For that reason, this week I went through the process of figuring out how to mirror the Software Update servers for 10.4 through 10.10. I am happy to say it works and I only had to sacrifice 276GB on my Server ;D

I created a guide on how to create your own mirror if you are interested

GitHub - jeffreybergier/Retro-Software-Update-Server: A guide on setting up an Apple Software Update Server Mirror in case Apple ever decides to shut down these old update servers

A guide on setting up an Apple Software Update Server Mirror in case Apple ever decides to shut down these old update servers - jeffreybergier/Retro-Software-Update-Server

github.com

 

[phunguss]

So is there a way to recreate the 10.0-10.3 manually to include in the archive?

 

[jeffburg]

That client and server works differently, so no. However if I get time, I want to try to reverse engineer the payloads that go back and forth so I can try to rebuild them. But as there are no copies of the server responses online (that I can find), it will be hard.

I think I will need to decompile the software update binary from Jaguar in Hopper. This is something I have never done before. So I am not sure if I will succeed.

 

[joevt]

I think I will need to decompile the software update binary from Jaguar in Hopper. This is something I have never done before. So I am not sure if I will succeed.

Hopper doesn't decompile PowerPC. Just disassemble. You'll need something else for decompiling. IDA, Ghidra, Binary Ninja, I don't know.

 

[jeffburg]

@joevt thanks for the pointers! As I said I have never done this. Good to know Hopper will not help me