Apple Configurator 2 - An underlying service (ACUInternetServiceContext) unexpectedly quit. [ConfigurationUtilityKit.error - 0x68 (104)]

The workaround that Apple gave me to restore a backup to a device in Apple Configurator 2 and to be able to supervise it is as follows:

1. Supervise and stage one device with the apps that you want and arrange the home screen to your liking, at this point I didn't bother with any profiles.
2. Backup the staged device.
3. Create a Blueprint that restores the backup you just created.
4. Create a Blueprint that manually supervises the devices (We don't use an MDM).
5. Apply the first Blueprint that restores the backup to your erased and unsupervised devices.
6. After the devices have been restored and whilst they're still on the Welcome screen, apply the second Blueprint which will supervise the devices.

Once the devices restart, complete the Welcome steps and add your apps using either a Blueprint or individually (this was more successful for me) using "Add > Apps...". The apps will drop into the right places on the home screen as you add them to the devices, but you'll most likely still see the error messages that we've all been getting when adding apps to the devices and you'll have to try this multiple times.

It's a slow process 😟

It's also worth mentioning that frequent reboots of the machine that Apple Configurator is running on seem to reduce the error messages.

I managed to get through to an engineer on the phone and we did a lot of trouble shooting, he took logs and passed them on to the Apple Configurator team.

Fortunately for me, the ACUInternetServiceContext error has almost completely disappeared over the last week. I still get it occasionally, but I've managed to deploy 50+ apps to all of our iPads. We didn't make any changes to our setup, it just started to work, I don't know if Apple made changes at their end or if it was just a transient error.

I've also been given a work around to the issue regarding not being able to stage one device, set up the home screen layout, back it up and restore it to the other iPads so I'm going to give that a go on Wednesday next week once we have no bookings for the devices and I can have a play with them, if it works I'll share everything I've found.

In the meantime, the engineer I spoke to has suggested that the more people leave feedback for the software, the more focussed the developers will be in fixing the issues. It really does make a difference if you can leave some feedback: http://www.apple.com/feedback/configurator.html

I'm still getting this error and I've tried everything I could possibly think of!

I unsupervised all of the iPads, made a new user account on the Mac we're using to manage the iPads, this also didn't work.

I completely wiped the Mac and installed a fresh copy of El Capitan, this still didn't work.

The only way I can get close to installing the apps on the iPad is to install them one at a time using a Blueprint, I still get the error (it seems to be at the very end of it downloading the app), but when I apply the Blueprint again it installs the app.

If I have to do this for 50+ apps, it's going to be a looooooooong day.

I also tried the Apple Configurator 2.1 beta (Build 3B28), exactly the same error.

Going to give Enterprise Support a call on Monday. From the searches I've done other people are getting the error but there's no real fix yet, I'll keep checking the betas.

By the way, have I missed something really obvious or do backups now also work in a different way?

Previously we Supervised and staged 1 iPad how we wanted it, then made a backup. We then Supervised and installed apps to the rest and restored this backup to the others so they were all set up with the right app layout.

Now when I do this, it unsupervises the iPads that have had the backup restored to them, the app layout is correct but they need to be provisioned to be Supervised again, when you provision a device it wipes it so you go back to the beginning!

Not had a chance to call them yet, but I've managed to restore a backup of a supervised device to the same device and it stayed supervised.

Tried restoring the backup to another device, first whilst it was supervised and then whilst it wasn't supervised, as expected, the backup was successfully restored both times but the device was unsupervised when it booted both times.

I'm just completely lost for how we can manage the devices now, they're not personal devices, but loan devices. A lecturer might want them for a few hours to do some work with students, when they come back we wipe and restore a backup to them, they're ready for the next lot.

But now it seems we can't do that? Or I have to individually set up each of our devices up how we want them, with the right home screen layout, and make individual backups of each one and restore the right backup to the right device?

In the UK, on Janet, no proxies, still getting the original error too! 😟

The only way I've been able to even slightly mitigate the error message is to add apps to devices 1 app at a time, I still get either the above error message or the following 9 out of 10 times, but I keep on trying and eventually the apps transfer, just slowly.

An unexpected error has occurred with these X iPads.

The operation couldn't be completed. Operation not permitted [NSPOSIXErrorDomain - 0x1 (1)]

I've found that if the app transfer fails with the NSPOSIX error message the iPads think they have the app installed and I have a higher rate of success after that if I select the devices in AC 2.1 and Remove > Apps... > Offending App before trying again.

This could all just be coincidental, but I'm getting there!