GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent Documentation

[bizard]

Why is GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent quietly installed, why is there no
information on it, and why is there no interface to control when/if it
runs. If you are curious, on Mac OS X it lives in ~/Library/Google/
GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.

[S. F]

On Jun 17, 10:06 am, bizard <bizard+goo...@propellerheads.com> wrote:
> Why isGoogleSoftwareUpdateAgentquietly installed, why is there no

> information on it, and why is there no interface to control when/if it
> runs.  If you are curious, on Mac OS X it lives in ~/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.

I agree. There should be a warning and a way to turn it off.

[Dickster]

There is a way to turn it off. It is in System Preferences ->
Accounts -> Login Items. You can delete it by selecting the item and
then click the minus button [-]. You can also get it to run
periodically, but you may have to establish a sym-link because, on my
system, it is contained within a bundle: ~/Library/Google/
GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle
In Terminal.app, I created a sym-link within my ~/Library as follows:

% cd
% cd Library
% ln -s $HOME/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/
GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent.app/Contents/
MacOS/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent .

Sorry about the long line, which end in space-dot. This creates
GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent in ~/Library so that you can launch it from
a simple shell script:

%cd
% cat - >runagent
#!/bin/sh
$HOME/Library/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent > /dev/null 2>&1 &
exit 0

Type ctrl-D to end the "cat" command, then make runagent executable:

% chmod 755 runagent

You can then setup a crontab task to run it at a specific day/time, or
just execute runagent in Terminal.app.
If you want to be able to add back to the Login Items, you'll need a
sym-link to GoogleSoftWareUpdateAgent.app, leaving out the Contents/
MacOS/GoogleSoftwareUpdateAgent part. You can place that sym-link in
~/Library too.
Then in Login Items, click [+] and navigate to your sym-link for
the .app form.

I do automatic shutdown every night, so I set up a crontab task to
execute runagent about 10 minutes before the shutdown time. Try to
match your shutdown schedule, giving yourself 10 minutes extra time
for runagent. eg:

% crontab -e
55 22 * * sun /Users/yourname/runagent

That executes my runagent every Sunday at 10:55pm.

Dickster