Lion Server push notifications to iOS 5 only partially working

Question

Lion Server push notifications to iOS 5 only partially working

I'm attempting to enable push notifications from my 10.7.2 Lion Server to my iOS 5 and Lion clients. All services (OD, Calendar Server, Mail, DNS, etc.) are running off of the same server. Push for Lion clients works fine for IMAP and CalDAV. I see "Push" in iCal preferences -> account settings.

For iOS 5 however I only see push enabled for Mail. I have confirmed it works as well. However, Calendars and Contacts show "fetch" in Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> "Fetch New Data" -> Advanced.

iChat is running. I've verified all the iChat related ports are opened in the firewall.

I have a "real" certificate for my domain and clients are pointed to that domain name.

There are no errors in the logs. The caldavd configuration file in /etc/caldavd/ looks fine.

I'd appreciate any ideas where else to look!

iPhone 4, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Oct 20, 2011 12:02 PM

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Answer 1

Oct 21, 2011 12:16 AM in response to Mellified Man

Not sure but in well known ports is this

2195	TCP	Apple Push Notification Service (APNS)	-	-	Push notifications
2196	TCP	Apple Push Notification Service (APNS)	-	-	Feedback service

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Answer 2

Oct 21, 2011 8:20 AM in response to William Bowden1

I had 2195 open on the server but not 2196. Opening that port didn't solve this though. After opening the firewall I added a new CalDAV entry on an iPhone. It still shows "fetch".

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Answer 3

ctrld

Level 1

40 points

Oct 22, 2011 10:42 AM in response to Mellified Man

For Profile Manager I opened these tcp ports: 1640, 2195, 5223 and push are working.

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Answer 4

Oct 22, 2011 11:01 AM in response to ctrld

Is Profile Manager required for push notifications? Email push works without enrolling the device so I'd expect the other services to work as well.

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Answer 5

ctrld

Level 1

40 points

Oct 22, 2011 1:35 PM in response to Mellified Man

No, it only using the same notification mechanism and you can open described ports and check if push working.

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Answer 6

Oct 23, 2011 9:00 AM in response to Mellified Man

As described by Apple, the method used for PUSH of Email is different than the method of PUSH for other services like CalDAV and CardDAV.

The Jabber XMPP stuff is used in notifications of CardDAV and CalDAV

The IMAP IDLE protocol is used in notifications of Email. (I dont know if they use XMPP also as an extra method if it is working)

So thats why if you look on your iPad in Preferences, the Push status of those accounts created by the Profile Manager that you downloaded to the device, it does not show "Push" as an option, just "Fetch".

If those services were working properly, the preferences would allow you to select "Push" which was confirmed to me last night by a Senior technician at Apple.

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Answer 7

Oct 23, 2011 9:13 AM in response to Community User

Draekz wrote:

As described by Apple, the method used for PUSH of Email is different than the method of PUSH for other services like CalDAV and CardDAV.

The Jabber XMPP stuff is used in notifications of CardDAV and CalDAV

The IMAP IDLE protocol is used in notifications of Email. (I dont know if they use XMPP also as an extra method if it is working)

So thats why if you look on your iPad in Preferences, the Push status of those accounts created by the Profile Manager that you downloaded to the device, it does not show "Push" as an option, just "Fetch".

If those services were working properly, the preferences would allow you to select "Push" which was confirmed to me last night by a Senior technician at Apple.

Do you have any information to support this claim? This Apple support article cleary states iOS 5 uses APNS (Apple Push Notification Service) for Mail, Calendar, and Contacts. IMAP IDLE and XMPP are used only for OS X.

As stated above I'm not using Profile Manager to setup these accounts. I have seen nothing that says using Profile Manager is required for push support to work. Perhaps push support for CalDAV / CardDAV requires Profile Manager but if so I'd like to see documentation!

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Answer 8

_morgen__

Level 1

140 points

Oct 23, 2011 10:25 AM in response to Mellified Man

In Snow Leopard Server, the CalDAV and CardDAV services only used XMPP for push, but in Lion Server both XMPP and APNS are supported. Profile Manager is not required for APNS, and while I see that my iOS device shows "Fetch" for my APNS-enabled CalDAV account, push *is* actually working. You just need to turn on APNS support on the server via Server.app > Hardware > Settings > Enable Apple push notifications.

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Answer 9

Oct 23, 2011 10:36 AM in response to Mellified Man

The article you pointed to, is exactly what I was referring to. However, I got off topic thinking about Lion and not iOS devices (which the topic clearly states) I've been browsing the various discussions about Push problems and must have gotten confused about the topic of this thread.

You are correct that for iOS 5 devices it shows APNS, for Lion it shows XMPP.

And to respond to ~morgen, No, alas turning on the "Enable Apple Push Notifications" does not seem to be the "One Size Fits All" solution to getting APNS working. For example, we have this checkbox on, and it does not work to ANY device. No push works for anything except Email.

Also keep in mind that the Apple Support Technician is the one who told me that the option "Push" will show up if it's turned on. If I can't trust the Apple Employees about how features work, then whom?

My setup is just as complex as litterally going to the store, buying a mac mini, and a couple macbook pros, bringing it home, setting it up with your domain, and it doesn't work out of the box.

Simply, for me, the product does not work as advertised, out of the box. But the apple specialists have said they will work with me to figure out why it's not working (they are stumped, worked for 2 hours with me yesterday)

Philippe

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Answer 10

_morgen__

Level 1

140 points

Oct 23, 2011 7:07 PM in response to Community User

So Draekz, your push issue was solved in the other thread?

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Answer 11

Oct 23, 2011 8:58 PM in response to Mellified Man

After reading the suggestions in this thread I have tried the following:

Port 8080 TCP was opened previously in my testing but didn't solve the issue.
I verified https://mydomain.com:8443/calendars/users/myuser/ is accessible and has a valid push entry.
I verified the listed <href xmlns='DAV:'>http://myserver.mydomain.com:8080/subscription</href> was accessible.
I turned off APNS, iCal Server, and Address Book Server on my server and rebooted.
I then re-enabled APNS followed by iCal server and Address Book Server.
I deleted the CalDAV and and CardDAV server entries on my test device (iPhone 4 running iOS 5).
I rebooted the phone.
I re-created the CalDAV and CardDAV entries on the phone.
I tried the CardDAV and CalDAV entries with two different user accounts.

At this point my iOS device still shows "fetch" for the CalDAV and CardDAV accounts. I'm not entirely sure if iCal push notifications are working. The invitation seems to appear quickly but that may be because email push is working (?). CardDAV push does not seem to work.

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Answer 12

eldrik

Level 1

65 points

Oct 24, 2011 1:32 AM in response to Mellified Man

Hi,

I can confirm that after opening port 8080 on my firewall for the subscription my calendar and addressbook entries on my iOS5 devices still show "fetch" (even after a fresh profilemanager deploy) but the calendar changes I now made via webinterface or iCal on my Leopard Client are now pushed to my iOS5 devices immediatly!

I habe not tested addressbook changes so no word about that.

Regards

Eldrik

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Answer 13

_morgen__

Level 1

140 points

Oct 24, 2011 7:39 AM in response to Mellified Man

Mellified: what do you see when you try running calendarserver_monitor_notifications on the server as described here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3342093?answerId=16500998022#16500998022

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Answer 14

Oct 24, 2011 9:44 AM in response to _morgen__

I see notifications pop for both the calendar and address book. My issue isn't with XMPP though, it is with APNS for iPhone Calendar and Address Book notifications.

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Answer 15

Oct 24, 2011 10:04 AM in response to Mellified Man

I have the same problem, where push notifications are on, 8080 is not blocked, but

https://mydomain.com:8443/calendars/users/myuser/ does not show a valid push entry. How do I get a valid push entry?

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