• Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mass Deployment

    APNs Logs on macOS

    I originally wrote this back in 2015 as an article for troubleshooting APNs traffic on a Profile Manager server. But it turns out that troubleshooting push notification communications between macOS Server and Apple’s Push Notification is basically the same as troubleshooting the apsd client on macOS. Basically, we’re gonna’ put the APNs daemon, apsd, into debug mode. To enable APNS debug logging, run these commands: defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.apsd APSLogLevel -int 7 defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.apsd APSWriteLogs -bool TRUE killall apsd Then use tail -f to watch the apsd.log file at /Library/Logs/apsd.log. Be wary, as this can fill up your system. So to disable, use these commands: defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.apsd APSWriteLogs -bool FALSE defaults delete…

  • Mac OS X Server

    Check to See if Your Caching Server is Working

    One of the first things we do when we setup a new macOS Caching Server is to check the logs to see if it’s actually serving content. You can view thee logs at /Library/Server/Caching/Logs/Debug.log. In the log, when a Caching Server has registered for your network, you’ll see a line that begins with the following: Got request for host = http://swcdn.apple.com/ This above means that the server actually got a request (as it says) and that the request is for an asset at swcdn.apple.com (followed by the actual package path). Once found, the server caches the asset, which starts with the following: Initializing asset handler for http://swcdn.apple.com/ The path would…