reliable update of Single App Mode application

marcmeyer's picture

marcmeyer

Joined: Jul 22, 2017
WWW
Submitted by marcmeyer on September 21, 2016 - 3:45pm
Your rating: None (8 votes)

We have an application that runs in "kiosk" mode: unattended, under MDM, and in Single App Mode.

To update the application with a newer version, we are forced to:

  1. 1, remove single app mode from mdm
  2. 2. exit the application (we have a way of doing that remotely)
  3. 3. use mdm to push a new version of the app
  4. 4. reapply the SAM profile from MDM

as a result the newly updated app starts up.

However, at times an IOS update is pending and when the SAM profile is removed, a dialog pops up asking whether to update the IOS version. This then backgrounds the application making it impossible to exit in step 2, and continue the process until someone manually intevenes.

Has anyone found a way to do this without falling afoul of this scenario?
Some have suggested blocking the updates with a proxy server. Anyone tried this? Does the proxy server have to be installed continuously or just when SAM mode is turned off?

Thanks.

‹ How to silently update enterprise app on supervised devices without VPP? Problems resigning complex iOS Apps for Enterprise Distribution ›
Top
brendan's picture

brendan

Joined: Jan 13, 2016

Our kiosk devices are

Post by brendan, Thursday September 22 2016, 14:24 pm
Your rating: None

Our kiosk devices are deployed on networks we control and thus we elected to block the DNS queries to mesu.apple.com. This was a lighter weight option in our environment then setting up a proxy server, although we may get to that. We found this was needed even without updates, if a device is powered off for any reason there is also a window for the update prompt to be triggered. The only other method I know of beyond blocking via DNS or proxy is using Apple's DEP which gives control of deploying iOS updates.

We do a very similar procedure to allow us to update our app which is normally in single app mode. I discussed it here:
http://enterpriseios.com/forum/topic/Updating_apps_in_Single_App_Mode

Top
taylor's picture

taylor

Joined: Jan 25, 2016
WWW

Another option

Post by taylor, Monday September 26 2016, 18:59 pm
Your rating: None (1 vote)

Installing a tvOS beta configuration profile apparently causes iOS to look at a different endpoint with incompatible updates, preventing it from promping when an update is available. More info here: http://simplemdm.com/2016/09/18/how-to-block-ios-updates/

Taylor
simplemdm.com
Intuitive, Powerful Apple Device Management

Top

Who is online?

There are currently 0 admins, 0 users and 21 guests online. Connected users: .

Recent Activity