Q: ML 10.8.2 Cannot login to Messages, Facetime, or Game Center

Hi Ralph,

I don't think this is a progress. There're lot other OS X installations - mainly in english - across the world and not everyone complain about a missig push functionality.

Btw: My daughters Ipod stopped running iMessage last night too.

Hopefully the latest IOS update on 6.0.1. didn't raise this issue.

However, another case for apple support....

Michael

oups wrong discussion

Some other development:

Today I had my nearly personal apple support guy on the phone. All because of this weird issue with apples push services. We tried to concentrate the latest things I've done into a comprehensive mail to the escalation team.

Around lunch time I decided to do an "over installation" of my current ML installation. The image was the original one downloaded from the appstore some weeks ago.

Hence installation went fine but didn't change anything in regards to the problem.

However, later I decided to wipe the partition with the ML installation. I booted into snow leopard, erased the partition with the disk utility and reinstalled from the scratch.

My expectation were big and - to be honest - I really expected the problem is gone and everything works fine. But nope, still the same issue.

Opened console and had a look to system.log. Oops: The imagent process is still debug enabled.....

I erased the partition and the settings for certain processes remain still the same????

Now it becomes mysterious and I think I'll superduper the fresh install on the external hard drive, which is lying at home.

Beside that, the log files show more or less same situation:

19.11.12 14:01:34,510 apsd[319]: Got malformed cert reply (no Protocol)

This point to the mismatching https communication. Hopefully this hardware is not bogus....

Sorry, that I can't figure out why there is still this issue with the message system,

Michael

Hi,

I actually have no idea.

You would have to ask an Apple repair person either at a Store or a Apple Authorised Service Provider.

It is something that came out of another thread and seems to be the closest thing there is to being a concrete cause - the exception seemingly being dumbaddel's German and English variant.

I could see it's purpose being to check the system is Valid, rather than a check specifically for iMessages to work.

8:18 PM      Monday; November 19, 2012

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

  iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.2)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad

"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

Hi,

It is beginning to seem that as soon as we seem to identify one cause and find a workaround for that it re=presents itself with a slightly different symptom and the last  fix  no longer seems to work.

Having go to a point where the serial number issue seemed to be the cause we now have two people who have different exceptions to this - your German install and Desiguju's different but present Serial number.

I would normally suggest the simplest "fix" we could find but this one does not seem to want to hold still.

8:42 PM      Monday; November 19, 2012

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

  iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.2)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad

"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

yesterday I was having issues with Imessage and facetime not logging on so I tried some of the things in this topic...nothing seemed to work.  Today just for the heck of it I tried again...imessages worked...however preferences is greyed out,  the side bar that would have your different conversations is blank, the only way I can start a new conversation is to repeditly press command+N, seveal other features are greyed out and any other windows I some how open that is apart of imessage can be exited without quitting the whole thing....Is there anything I can do to fix this?

HI,

Yesterday there was an outage for FaceTime and iMessages.

It would be best to start with restarting the computer to see if this sorts things out.

9:10 PM      Monday; November 19, 2012

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

  iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.2)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad

"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

I tried restarting but still no luck it is still acting buggy for some reason...like it is missing something.

Hi Guys,

I think the problem is with the result of installing iMessages Beta with iMessage and mountain lion migration.

Here the solution that worked for me.

Edit the /etc/hosts and comment this line by adding # at the end

#127.0.0.1 CRL.VERISIGN.NET

Best Regards,

Hi Ralph,

good advice in reagards to a possible hardware issue.

Today I did two new installtion attempts. The first one with the originally purchase OS X Installation media, like all the attempts before. The second installation with a new downloaded version from the appstore.

The difference is 10.8.1. vs. 10.8.2.

The problem still exist, but the console messages are more clear:

The apsd service try to validate the CSR for exchanging data for imessage, facetime and so on. Hence the apsd stated: "Certificate not yet generated", try to validate and get a response Error 500. The result is then "Get malformed cert reply (no Protocol)". That's correct, because there is no service for the request but a http error. Maybe it just point to a invalid host.

Unfortunately there's no hint to any host or IP Adress.

I think, this is the key issue for the malfunction, at least on my computer.

If anyone know how to debug that process to gather the target host information, this would be very much appreciated.

Cheers,

Michael

Hi all,

well, got the debug stuff done and kept new findings:

First off all do following for enable debug of apsd (be aware that ML has a process named apsd, while older OS X have ApplePushServices):

1. sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.apsd APSLogLevel -int  7 (or higher)

2. sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.apsd APSWriteLogs -bool TRUE

3. sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.apsd EnableDetailedLogging -bool TRUE

Then gather the current pid of apsd and kill it. It'll restart immediately.

Go to /Library/Logs and do sudo tail -f apsd.log

There you'll find lot of information about certificate issues and wahtever communication between your device and albert.apple.com.

And here we are ! Following log entry was more then curious:

apsd[1291] <Error>: Got connection error Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=-1202 "The certificate for this server is invalid. You might be connecting to a server that is pretending to be “albert.apple.com” which could put your confidential information at risk." UserInfo=0x7f86724645a0 {NSURLErrorFailingURLPeerTrustErrorKey=<SecTrust 0x7f8672446a90 [0x7fff7b164fd0]>, NSLocalizedRecoverySuggestion=Would you like to connect to the server anyway?, NSUnderlyingError=0x7f8672466f80 "The certificate for this server is invalid. You might be connecting to a server that is pretending to be “albert.apple.com” which could put your confidential information at risk.", NSErrorPeerCertificateChainKey=(

            "<SecCertificate 0x7f86724394f0 [0x7fff7b164fd0]>"

        ), NSLocalizedDescription=The certificate for this server is invalid. You might be connecting to a server that is pretending to be “albert.apple.com” which could put your confidential information at risk., NSErrorFailingURLKey=https://albert.apple.com/WebObjects/ALUnbrick.woa/wa/deviceActivation?device=Mac OS, NSErrorFailingURLStringKey=https://albert.apple.com/WebObjects/ALUnbrick.woa/wa/deviceActivation?device=Mac OS, NSErrorClientCertificateStateKey=0}

It says: The connection to albert.apple.com may be bogus, because some address is pretending to be albert.apple.com.

Further it asks to continue anyway. But as a background process there's no way to say "yes".....

Beside this conclusion I did a dtruss on the apsd service. Within all the cryptic stuff one interesting message appeared:

The http error 500 while connecting to the services

http://EVIntl-oscp.versign.com

http://EVIntl-aia.verisign.com/EvIntl2006.cer

Both services are for accepting, certifying and revoking certificates trusts by verisgn.

If you connect to this devloper network you'll find these addresses as detailed information within the certificate for the https connection.

Well, I can't believe this services are down or anyway not working. This should result in a scream everywhere.

So it looks like my problem is a very very special one and not that like others in failing to connect to the push services.

But maybe some else is able to use the steps and do some research on the problem.

Thanks,

Michael

I contacted the Apple Support shop here in Costa Rica and Im going to take mi iMac so they can flash back the serial, I let you guys know if this work for me.

HI,

This thread is littered with that advice.

People that are still struggling with this issue have checked that file.

The "Commenting Out"  should be the # symbol  (Hash or Pound sign depending where in the world you are) should be placed at the beginning of the line.

It's the item that causes the line to be ignored.

I am not sure if your post is then an example or is actually telling people to place something in the wrong place.

9:54 PM      Tuesday; November 20, 2012

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

  iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.2)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad

"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

HI,

More spanners aimed at more works.

Using Little Snitch.

re apsd

No "Albert" Listed.

IMAgent and Others

The last line is Yahoo (It does not conform to the AIM and Jabber login format)

IMRemoteURLConnectionAgent.xpc is the iMessages part connecting in Listening mode to the server

(I am not running Messages at this time)

The IMAgent lines are for my other 9 accounts that would be logged in if I had the app open and again provides a "Listening" brief to those servers for Off line IMs  (whether you see them is controlled in Messages (or iChat) Prefs > General section)

There is one line that appears to be related to iMessages  (However it could be the login to me.com for AIM to be able to "See" the passwords)

But again no "Albert" named server.

Sorry this is no clearer but I have not heard of an Apple server called Albert.

10:20 PM      Tuesday; November 20, 2012

Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"

  iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Mountain Lion 10.8.2)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
 Couple of iPhones and an iPad

"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously

Hi Ralph,

well, you r are right, but this ist the situation of having a validated certificate for the communication between imessage an x-courier.push.apple.com.

I'm at the very first beginning and for certificate validation a connection to albert.aple.com is established.

Try just https://albert.apple.com in a web browser. There will nothing be shown, but if you look at the certificate details you'll can follow the explanation I've done above. Also this certificate is sign by versign.

Hence the chain is as follows:

New OS X installation, OS X generate a selfsigned certificate for messaging purposes. This selfsignes certificate (some ubiquity....) must be validated by another authority, the one of Apple. Hence the apsd try to send the CSR over to the valdation URL (URI: http://EVIntl-crl.verisign.com/EVIntl2006.crl) but my computer get's no connection but an Error 500. If you just type the verisign URL in a web browser, it shows some rubbish but not a 500.

Without that validation nothing else will matter. No connectivity and no messages,facetime and so on.

What I'll do at the weekend at home: I'll do another fresh install from the image on my Imac. Maybe the images (even the one downloaded yesterday) got broken in a little detail, that prevent OS X to run properly.

Michael