For customers using Addigy, MDM Watchdog is automatically enabled for all devices and is always up-to-date with best practices.

Introducing
MDM Watchdog

MDM Watchdog safeguards the health and responsiveness of your macOS fleet by addressing and resolving stuck devices, ensuring seamless device management and communication. Works with any MDM solution.

Download MDM Watchdog
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On-Demand Webinar: How MDM Watchdog Works

Our resident Apple experts Bryce Carlson, Product Manager, and Carlos Ruiz, Senior Software Engineer, showcase how the MDM Watchdog Utility works to solve stuck macOS devices and how to use it with any MDM tool.

Download and Install MDM Watchdog

The download button below will always link to the latest version of the MDM Watchdog.

Download the PKG file

Click to read the Terms & Conditions

Installation Instructions

Step 1: Deploy the PKG to any Mac running High Sierra or later. Double click the PKG file or run the command below:

installer -pkg mdm-watchdog.pkg -target /

Step 2: A binary named mdm-watchdog will be installed into /usr/local/bin/  

Step 3: A plist file named com.addigy.mdm-wachdog.plist will be installed into /Library/LaunchDaemons. It controls how often watchdog runs and is set to run every 95 minutes. MDM Watchdog writes any output into the standard log files.  

Step 4: To test the utility and see a list of commands, you can begin by running mdm-watchdog

FAQs

Yes, it only relies on native APIs that are available on any Mac running on macOS High Sierra or later. Your MDM’s role is to deploy and monitor the utility on your Macs.

When we started hearing about the Mac admin community having trouble managing Software Updates, we ran our own analysis and found that a significant amount of Macs were not responding to MDM commands in general. After finding a solution that greatly improved our metrics, we realized we could package a standalone utility for general use that includes most of what we added to Addigy.

MDM will continue to evolve and be improved, and in time we expect that the benefits of MDM Watchdog will no longer be necessary.

This standalone PKG uses the same algorithm as the built-in version within Addigy. However, in order to ensure your data privacy, this PKG utility does not communicate with Addigy in any way.

Customers using  Addigy MDM Watchdog is automatically enabled for all devices, and is always up-to-date with  best practices. The built in MDM Watchdog also leverages Addigy MDM data points that your MDM may not expose or have available to measure connectivity and health. This can only be done from the MDM Server itself. However, we’re offering this for all MDMs as a free resource using all the device-side components available to gauge MDM health locally. If you want to learn more about Addigy, request a free trial.

MDM Watchdog only writes output to the local log file on the Mac it is running on. MDM Watchdog does not use network resources or ever contact Addigy.

Follow these steps:

  • log show –predicate ‘process = “mdm-watchdog”‘ 
  • Sample Output showing that MDM Watchdog has not had to restart either the MDM Service or Software Update Daemon:
    • mdm-watchdog: MDMEnrolled: true
      • MDMIdentityError: false
      • MDMClientStuck: false
      • MDMSoftwareUpdatesStuck: false
      • MDMClientRestarted: false
      • SoftwareUpdateDaemonRestarted: false
      • LastMDMKickstart: 0001-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 UTC
      • LastSoftwareUpdateDaemonKickstart: 0001-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 UTC

Check this page for the latest version, or subscribe to MDM Watchdog updates in the form above. We will email subscribers every time a new version is available.

We’ve outlined the steps here. We have simplified the migration process by leveraging a script or PKG file.

Yes! Thank you. You can email [email protected]. Also, please follow the conversation on MDM Watchdog on MacAdmins Addigy slack channel and Addigy’s Community Subreddit.