The mailing list for users of the eduroam Configuration Assistant Tool (CAT)

[Martin Pauly <pauly AT hrz.uni-marburg.de>]

Hi,

On 30.03.21 06:41, Stefan Winter wrote:
> The CAT installer for "Apple device" works just fine with iPads
> (with the Apple file format "mobileconfig", not eap-config).
sure, we have been using the .mobilconfig profiles all the time :-))

> Is the issue about having no offline way to get the corresponding
> .mobileconfig file onto the iPads? 
yes, this is the problem at hand.

> Naively I would think you'd be able to use some sort of USB connection?
No, they don't. Or sometimes, they do, sort of. AFAIK, hooking up a USB stick
to an iPad via USB-OTG is not supported at all. If you connect the
Lighnting-USB(male) cable to a PC, all kind of funny things can happen,
depending on Apple's idea of a "security compartment" for each app,
your version of libimobiledevice on a Linux PC and so on.
(e.g. with Windows I get photos and videos, with Linux I get all
_other_ files). But I never managed to pull a .mobileconfig through
simple file transfer and use it afterwards. Even on macOS,
everything is strictly tied to Apple's MIME type. On macOS, you
may at least download it and use it later from your Downloads folder.
In the background, some magic keeps track of the MIME type that
was present at download time (similar to the resource fork in
the file system used in Mac OS <10).

For CAT on Android, reality turned out to be strikingly similar,
despite intended otherwise by you, Gareth (developer), and others.
E.g. the Android intent to trigger installation by file extension .eap-config
had stopped working at some point. So I asked Gareth to add a
File/open dialog to the app, and so he did, cf.
https://github.com/GEANT/CAT-Android/issues/13
Our support students found this to be very helpful, e.g. on SIM-less tablets.

> FWIW, geteduroam AFAIK does not preload anything. It downloads the 
> eap-config file for the selected institution in real-time.
Yes, and here we have our circular dependency again. Adding a similar
dialogue to geteduroam will be a feature request, but I think I should
pursue this on the specific list when more basic things are settled.
What caught my attention was the fact that getedurom on iOS obviously
does a good job in injecting correct WiFi settings into the system
without having to rely on Apple's MIME type requirements.
So this might open up a way to simply transfer a .eap-config file via
said Lightning-USB cable, and open it from the app. But this is really
about geteduroam and should go on the specific list.

Cheers, Martin

--
  Dr. Martin Pauly     Phone:  +49-6421-28-23527
  HRZ Univ. Marburg    Fax:    +49-6421-28-26994
  Hans-Meerwein-Str.   E-Mail: pauly AT HRZ.Uni-Marburg.DE
  D-35032 Marburg

Attachment: smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature