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We used over the air iOS application distribution. All our ios apps can be installed over the air by our customers and testers.

Sometimes we have problems with the installation process. Few times my collegues noticed they are unable to install application. I tried installing the application specified on the device (the one collegues failed to install the application), connected to iMac.

Few times I got message "Unable to download at this time", but there is no error messages in the console. After few times pressing Retry, app succesfully installs and when I try then to install it once more it installs well.

The problem is, apps can differ in size and it is annoying to retry few times when apps is larger than 50 MB, for example.

So for me it is the black magic, not a correct workflow. And I want to find a reason for that failures.

May someone know possible reasons for such behaviour and how can I prevent one in future?

Any help would be appreciated!

jaromudr
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3 Answers3

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Use testflightapp.com instead of Apple's default way. Before we used TestFlight we also saw those kind of errors. We never figured out the real reason it was so inconsistent but suspected it might be a caching issue. TestFlight has made life so much easier.

ahwulf
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  • I use TestFlight successfully as well, there is also http://hockeykit.net/ which seems to be the popular choice now – Nick May 22 '13 at 14:30
  • Of course, it is possible to use TestFlight or some other tool, but as for me it is better to find real reason and to improve our own solution. The reason is that we built our own service for distributing application that we use inside and we are flexible in building our own application delivery workflow. – jaromudr May 22 '13 at 20:38
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The TestFlight FAQ page on this topic lists a variety of reasons for this:

  • Device storage is full
  • The provisioning profile is a developer provisioning profile
  • The ad hoc distribution provisioning profile is corrupted and the device is having an issue with it (this can happen for multiple reasons. Including issues with 3rd party dev tools that could be causing a conflict).
  • The device was restored from a backup and is causing a conflict for over-the-air distribution
  • There was a network timeout
  • Architecture settings of the build and the device are incompatible ( can sometimes happen when "Build Active Architecture Only" is on when building).
  • The target minimum iOS version for the app is greater than the iOS version installed on the device.
  • Not Using Mobile Safari.

If, as you say, there's nothing in the console, and the problem is only intermittent, that seems to highlight network timeout as the cause.

You may want to consider not bundling the large resources (photos/videos?) inside the app, but rather have the app download the resources on launch, or as needed, and then keep them. This would also save time updating between versions if the content hasn't changed.

Aaron Brager
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  • Wifi may be the problem, as the installation of IPA works flawlessly on one network, fails on another. However, the failing network has no apparent problems that I can fix and runs at full speed. None of the tips on the TestFlight FAQ page helped with this problem. – ninjaneer Sep 11 '13 at 00:16
  • You could try deploying a 1MB test app, and see if installation of this app fails at the same frequency as your 50MB app. – Aaron Brager Sep 11 '13 at 01:53
  • I could, but it doesn't really confirm anything. The download fails after it finished downloading 20-30MB out of the 61MB. – ninjaneer Sep 11 '13 at 05:59
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I'm experiencing this problem too, but it is strictly related to one device on my team. Even if I'm attached to a WiFi connection it downloads very very slow, it doesn't depend on team provisioning, but it seems really connected to a setting/device problem. Sometimes (most) it finishes the installation taking a lot of times, sometimes shows that kind of error message, sometimes beahave normal.
The problem I'm experiencing is on iPhone 5, but on another iPhone 5 installation finishes without a glitch.
Updating to iOS7 the problem went away. My guess is that is something in iOS6 (because I started to have this problem on this version of iOS) I've tried also with clean iOS6 install without success.
It should be worth to mention that also debug on this device is slower than on the other devices.
It is not a real solution, but if you can, I would update to iOS7.
Chers, Andrea

Andrea
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  • While updating iOS 7 does fix it, I'm still looking for a better solution since iPod touch 4th gens can't update to iOS 7. – ninjaneer Sep 17 '13 at 01:41
  • Thanks. I do understand the frustration, while I was getting this problem I almost searched everywhere without found a solution. The only thing remains is ask to Apple using a DST token. – Andrea Sep 17 '13 at 07:20