Shared iPad WIFI and Log in Issues

[ms_g]

I have a brand new fleet of 50 iPads. We have set these up as Shared iPad in early July, following Meraki documentation. We also have 16 staff iPads, set up as normal (not shared iPad)

We have then not had a single Shared iPad operational on our school network. Not one. 

The current issue is - the iPad knows it is a Shared iPad. I can see the users associated with this device as I have used a hotspot or home wifi to log the users in to test them. Back at school, I select student John Doe and it asks for his pin. I enter his pin and it says "getting ready" and then hangs there for several minutes. It then says Log In Failed. 

Or, it might allow a Joh Doe to log in, but once he logs out he cannot log in again without the same Log In Failed issue. 

I have called Meraki many times over the past few weeks, sometimes for 2 hours at a time.  I have factory reset some iPads, I have deleted and restarted whole profiles. Meraki had me generate logs and sent them off somewhere a week ago, have had no support action since.

I know there is a current issue with pushing out apple profiles, so perhaps that is contributing to the problem. But if anyone else has had this issue, please shed some light for me!

[jared_f]

I am assuming that the student isn't receiving profiles and apps which is causing the login to fail and bounce from Meraki. No Apple devices are communicating with Meraki which may be causing the problem you are seeing. It seems that enrollment comes down just fine through DEP, yet nothing is syncing down. They are working on the problem.

[thnat]

We've had this issue for nearly a couple of months now. I contacted Apple and uploaded logs for their engineers to look at a few weeks ago but still haven't heard from them yet.

[ms_g]

We've been battling this issue for months and after talking to both Meraki and Apple Enterprise, we've given up entirely on Shared iPad. A real disappointment as this was what we wanted when we bought our new iPads. No one has been able to solve this issue. 

[jared_f]

From my understanding, it is working on a hotspot or at home? Might be a network problem and not a Meraki/iOS problem.

[AJ_Calps]

HI

Same issue here at school with 50 shared ipads. We can login first time to a user of a given ipad and then log out and back into the user or switch to another user and login. It seems that the issue occurs when the ipad is left for a half an hour or so Then the users get "login failed' and the only way to get them back is to reset their password in Apple School Manger.

I follow Jared_f's thinking that it could be network - but what - why can it log in and out of users and behave as it should but when left for a period then not be able to login. 

[ms_g]

Hi there

We have also had to conclude that it is network but as you have stated, it works for the user's first log in or once you reset their password - so perhaps it is connecting through a different portal/port/pathway for this initial log in?

However I also can't find any info about what I can block or unblock to help this network issue. 

[jared_f]

I would reach out to Apple Education team and see what needs to be whitelisted.

[AJ_Calps]

Hi Jared_f, ms_g

I have talked to Apple Support and think we have all URLs unblocked. I have tried looking at proxy logs also with no success. ( I dont see any unreachable URLs)  I am tempted to think that the login is via Meraki and Meraki syncs with Apple School Manager. Meraki also cant identify where the issue is. If it is a URL / port I cant identify it and I cant see how the ipad functions happily on initial log in and subsequent logins until you leave it for a while (unless the ipad caches the password for a limited time) and thereafter it has to go back to Meraki for verification. 

I cant get anyone from Meraki who can state

1. the exact initial login process including urls and port

2 if the ipads cache the passcode at all

3 the exact subsequent login process

4 if my assumption that shared ipads verify against Meraki and Meraki syncs with Apple is correct

[ms_g]

Thank you so much for your reply AJ_Calps. I have been dealing with this issue for months now and have also found Meraki unable to give specifics as you suggested. They had me factory reset my iPads three times, recreate my profiles three times, call them and Apple endless times. 

[AJ_Calps]

yep, feeling your pain. I think we will also drop the shared ipad idea. I cant really find anyone who has it working successfully and without Meraki's help to pinpoint the issue the whole process is a little to magical to be able to diagnose.

[roggro]

I have had the same issue.  A class of about 20 or so students, 4 or 5 in every period are having this issue.  Tried this on school wifi, a verizon jetpack and at&t phones 4g mobile hotspot.  Have to go into Apple School Manager to reset students password.  That is not a solution unfortunately.

[Tcarlson]

Same issue here,  also using JAMF at our district.   Has anyone tried logging in on a different network, like at home.  The only way we have to fix it is to reset the password.

[Tim-Ivett]

Glad to hear other people are also having this issue as both Apple and JAMF have said it's just me. The original post describes my problem exactly with the 'Login Failed Issue' - works sometimes and works after a password reset.

Can I ask everyone that's posted here, are we all using the shared iPads in schools or more importantly.. Are we all using them through a proxy server? I've been wondering for some time if it's to do with the entries in our 'Proxy Exclusion List' in our proxy server. I currently exclude:

.mdmenrollment.apple.com
.iosapps.itunes.apple.com
.icloud.com

As we are having the same issue with various MDM software it's most liely going to be Apple or a network/proxy issue.

This has been an ongoing issue with our Shared iPads and neither Apple, JAMF or Meraki seem to be able to offer any suggestions. Very frustrating. Hope we get a solution soon 🙂

Tim

[Tim-Ivett]

Should also ask if everyone else is running an Apple Caching Server. I think it's unlikely that we're going to get a solution from Apple but if we could at least figure out what we all have in common we might be able to figure out what is causing the issue.

[ChrisJDUC]

We've been dealing with the same problem today (Using JAMF Pro). Occurs on our enterprise WPA2 wifi but not on any personal WPA2 PSK AP we try. We noticed the wifi dropping out and the user having to sign back into the wifi if they were a new user and the setup process to change the password was triggered. This, along with the fact we needed to trust the wifi certificate manually made us think the problem was due to the user needing to trust the certificate but the trust message not getting shown (probably can't be at the point it triggers) was breaking things. We seem to have it fixed now by including the wifi settings for the enterprise network along with the chain or certificates (root down to the actual wifi certificate) in a configuration profile that we send out to all the devices. Now we can log on without any problems.

[Tim-Ivett]

Hi Chris,

Just out of curiosity did this fix the problem long term or do you still have issues? We still have a lot of issues with the login process. I also believe it's due to having to trust the certificate for the enterprise wifi. However, we were already sending our wifi settings and certificates out via a configuration profile so this didn't fix the issue for us.

Thanks,

Tim