cannot enable device management in profile management

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Level 1

33 points

cannot enable device management in profile management

We have el capitan and server.app 5.1.7 - running on a 2014 mini which is the replica of in a 2 mini server OD domain.

The profile manager on the main OD server went belly up about a month ago, and no matter what, my multiple calls and emails to apple care have led us nowhere, we need it, so, i was proposing to move (remake) profile manager on our backup OD replica server...

A couple of questions for the very knowledgable amongst you.

1, CAN i run profile manager on a domain which has previously had PM on the master OD

2, If i promote the Replica OD to master, will it effect my new Profile manager setup.

3, is there a way of migrating settings that i can still find on the workstations to the new setup before i bind them all to it so i can reduce my workload sorting this out.

4, CAN i run profile manager on a replica server?

I HAVE it up and running, well sort of, but the thing that is that though i can turn on profile manager and log in - it sees our groups and users - but it will NOT turn on device management - whenever i try to enable it - it flashes up it is creating a certificate authority - then it flashes up that it is getting certificates for a short while and then goes back to the screen asking for "organisation information" - nothing happens after that even if i try and run it again.

I have a godaddy cert on that machine which is apparently OK for the SSL sites, but there is no code signing cert on - i did create a self signed one, which i can use to sign the configuration profiles - but actually the inability to manage devices is the deal changer here, we only have 50 managed machines and we heavily rely on device management.

Mac mini, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6), Set as a server

Posted on Oct 4, 2016 8:04 AM

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Answer 1

Ashley Drees Author

Level 1

33 points

Oct 4, 2016 8:10 AM in response to Ashley Drees

Just for reference - i have just reset the profile manager on this machine back to square one - so everything is clean apparently. I am guessing that i have missed something with the SSL certs - or that i have missed a step.. either way i would really love to get it working properly.

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Answer 2

MT Buck

Level 1

30 points

Nov 1, 2016 11:08 AM in response to Ashley Drees

Hi Ashley,

Did you by chance have any lucky getting things back up? I think we are in the same boat. We moved our Server App to a different machine a while back, and everything was working, but then in an update Profile Manager failed and wouldn't turn on (or should I say, it would turn right back off again). In hindsight, I probably should have justreset the profile manager (at the top of the page) - but I thought a clean start might be better, so we did the reset and clear all data option.

Good news is that Profile Manager itself is now functioning again. But I can't get Device Management to Enable? I walk through the "configure" steps and it doesn't give any obvious errors, but the status remains "Disabled." I believe it is likely a Certificate Issue... but I really don't know? Were you able to get it to enable? If so, any tips you can give?

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Answer 3

Ashley Drees Author

Level 1

33 points

Nov 1, 2016 11:54 AM in response to MT Buck

I'll outline the process - in moving the OD master to our replica machine - the certs did not get copied to the new machine so machine management could not set itself up (i expected the certs to move across when the replica was promoted). We had given up on moving the existing management database and so flushed the settings - then i made a backup of the OD master and killed off the replica OD and then the master - when recreating the OD master we imported the backup made earlier and the setup process created the correct certs to allow the Machine Management to be setup. The process deleted the certs that we had installed on the machine, so we had to re-set them. And then remake the replica.

I hope that works, I could not find any reference to which certs were needed for MDM or how to create them - and the only option we were given was to backup - destroy - remake OD.

It actually took a lot less time than i thought it would, and i made sure i had a clone of our boot environment as well as the OD backup just in case.

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