"Cannot connect to server" when installing ipa via OTA

Question

I have a configuration profile installed and ipa has been successfully created. Ipa will install in Dropbox without any problems, but the same ipa will give an error when installing via OTA.

I have attached a screenshot of the error.

How can I solve the problem. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

The answer may depend on which OTA server you are using.

If you use your own OTA server like me, then the problem may be your URL.

I saw the same "Can not connect to ..." error today with my personal OTA server. The problem was the itms-services URL.

 itms-services://?action=download-manifest&url=https://3ea1be94.ngrok.com/TestApp.plist 

.plist file .plist and host name for my &url= parameter. As soon as I corrected them and updated the page, everything was in order.

If you use your own OTA server, make sure the &url= parameter is accurate and make sure it uses HTTPS. If you are not using your own OTA server, contact the person who runs it as they can help.

Answer 2

To properly distribute the IPA file from HTTP, you must put a web page with a link that points to the itms-services special link, for example:

 <a href="itms-services://?action=download-manifest&url=https://yourdomain.com/path/Manifest.plist">Download App</a> 

This manifest file is very simple, you need the package and the URL of the IPA file

You can find an example of starting with this: https://gist.github.com/kEpEx/777df3cb1fd4bd851409

A few important things to consider.

• A valid certificate is required, and the URL from Manifest and IPA must be HTTPS (I'm not sure that certified certificates are signed on it)
• Take care of the manifest URL, sometimes you have URL parameters, you want to assign them a URL or use a simplified URL
• Sometimes you want to authorize users before allowing them to download manifest or IPA files, take care of this, because safari cookies are lost when you click on this link, so if you check for a cookie-based session, you will get the message “Can not connect to ". You will need to come up with the best aproach, for example, generating temporary tokens or something like that (this moment took me 2 days to work to understand why it failed).