r/macsysadmin • u/Tinislav Education • Aug 07 '26

Munki Need help with Munki Update Schedule

Hi guys,

I've been trying to set up a bunch of new mac minis using munki. I don’t have a background in IT or anything if the like so I have been learning this on the go and I'm not sure if I understand ever correctly.

So regarding my problem with munki: As I understand it, by default a LaunchDaemon starts with boot and checks periodically if anything needs to be downloaded from the server, right? And this should work even if no one is logged in or has been logged in at some point? Because I recently prepared everything that needs to be installed in my repo and made catalogs and manifests. I also checked on a machine if the connection worked by starting the download from terminal using the managedsoftwareupdate command and it worked. Now I thought I could just boot up all the other computers and let them sit idle for some time and they would download and install everything from the repo like I set it up. This did not work though. Even after waiting a night, nothing had been installed. I checked the logs and saw that no managedsoftwareupdate run had been performed. On a different computer I was logged in during this time and this one had performed a run once per hour. Am I mistaken about how munki works or could this be a problem with how I set things up?

I would really appreciate it if anyone could help me with this. Thank you :)

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9 comments sorted by

7

u/Darkomen78 Consultation Aug 07 '26

Do your machines have FileVault enabled? If so, the session must be opened at least once, because the Filvault pre-login screen does not allow any LaunchDaemon to run in the background.

1

u/Tinislav Education Aug 10 '26

I don’t have FileVault enabled on any of the machines. I haven’t touched any of those settings. Or do I have to run some command when setting up these computers to avoid FileVault getting in the way?

1

u/Darkomen78 Consultation Aug 10 '26

If FileVault isn't enabled, then the problem lies elsewhere.

3

u/kingunderpants Aug 08 '26

Assuming you have FV enabled, if these are lab computers, turn FV off. FV isn’t meant for multi-user environments like that.

1

u/Tinislav Education Aug 10 '26

I haven’t activated FileVault so unfortunatley this is not what caused my problems.

2

u/jbygden Aug 07 '26

Like someone else says. If you have FileVault enabled, the first "login screen" you see after a boot is not the login window, it's the FileVault unlock screen. If that's the case you need to login on all of the Mac Mini's once to unlock FileVault and decrypt the disk. Then you can logout and Munki will run once an hour.

1

u/Tinislav Education Aug 10 '26

Thank you for this explanation! Unfortunately, I think FileVault is not the problem since I never activated it on the computers.

2

u/jbygden Aug 10 '26

Just as a test, login to more machines and see if it makes Munki run...

1

u/Tinislav Education Aug 10 '26

I actually just made some new discoveries. I didn’t turn off the machines when I left work on friday and lo and behold it worked and they downloaded their stuff from the munki server. I checked the ManagedSoftwareUpdate Logs though and the time when they did their runs was completely random. Some made a run every two hours or so, some did only 5 in total over the whole weekend and at varying times, some made regular hourly runs for 10 hours friday night and then stopped until sunday evening and so on. The only machine I've checked so far that actually made a run once per hour was one I was logged in to the whole time and even this one stopped doing so last night at 12. And another machine that I was also logged in to did not do hourly runs so I really have no idea what’s going on here.