No remote access to Macs for updates? No problem!

I was looking into getting remote desktop access to some of the Macs I manage. The reason? As a lazy (in a good way) sysadmin, I didn't want to keep going down to my lab to update the Macs when security patches came out. I wanted something that came with the box, a la Windows Remote Desktop (RDP). I didn't want to install third party products like VNC or pay for anything extra.

Voilà, here is the solution:

ssh username@remotehost
sudo softwareupdate -l
sudo softwareupdate -i name_of_update

Firefox 2.0.0.4 doesn't like limited users

I run as a limited user on my XP machines, and Firefox 2.0.0.4 doesn't like this. Even after I install/upgrade Firefox as an admin user, I get "One or more files could not be updated..." each time I run Firefox as my regular user.

Josh Flanagan has a fix for this. I hope the Mozilla folks fix this for the next release or my confidence will begin flagging.