Discussion around issues in Catlina MacOS

[michael_brado]

There has been a lot of chaos on Catalina MacOS and its interaction with networks that have deployed Ruckus products for wireless service.  Issues are being seen in current Catalina MacOS that did not appear in earlier releases of MacOS: Mojave, High-Sierra, etc.

TAC managers have asked that we share information with our customers.

It is recommended that Macbook users use 10.15.4 who wish to use Catalina OS or have got an relatively older version of Catalina MacOS: namely 10.15, 10.15.1, 10.15.2 or 10.15.3. Apple has fixed a variety of bugs including but not limited to Wi-Fi, Safari stop responding when attempting to use Apple Pay, HSTS enhancement etc.

Apple has released beta version of 10.15.5 and it will soon be available officially on their website.

Some of the useful URLs on issues encountered with Catalino OS are:

-> https://www.techradar.com/news/macos-catalina-10154-gets-a-stability-update-but-reports-claim-its-br...

-> https://macreports.com/mac-catalina-wi-fi-problems-fix/

-> https://www.switchingtomac.com/tutorials/osx/macbook-pro-constantly-dropping-wireless-connection

-> https://osxdaily.com/2014/04/24/fix-mac-disconnect-wifi-sleep/

 

Please note that Catalina is true 64-bit operating system and Apple has asked all the users to use 64-bit version of those applications. Please read the following URLs for further information:

-> https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/12/20908567/apple-macos-catalina-breaking-apps-32-bit-support-how-t...

 

Quotes on 32-bit applications:

“Apple first announced that it would ultimately wind down support for 32-bit apps more than a year and a half ago, when it began pushing alerts to macOS High Sierra users that 32-bit software was “unsupported.” The apps still worked, but with Catalina’s official unveiling back in June at WWDC, Apple made the eventual discontinuation official. With the launch of Catalina, 32-bit apps no longer function.”

[erin_mcclellen]

The information comes from your own release notes!

[Vineet_nejwala]

Can you please point me to it ? I mean ZD or vSZ and what version release? Let me go through it and I would be in a better position to reply.

Best Regards
Vineet

[Vineet_nejwala]

Hi Team,

I was able to find out the below article that would be helpful. The article has explained the recommended version for MacOS as well as the issue that were specific to MacOS devices.

https://support.ruckuswireless.com/articles/000010544

Best Regards
Vineet

[chris_downing_g]

Vineet... this is an issue affecting LOTS of sites... the response from Ruckus (including that article you link to here) has been dismal.

We (Prince Alfred College - in South Australia) reported this issue 11 months ago... we've had the 'roam-save 2' change in place for 10 months and still have macOS clients running 10.15.4 and 10.15.6 that are still exhibiting this problem.

That article also states "Ruckus wireless AP has connectivity issues with Catalina version of MacOS; ALTHOUGH TECHNICALLY NOT TRUE, customers like to get technically analyzed answer to prove otherwise"  ...I note that there is no "technically analyzed answer" provided!

For your reference, in the last 9 months we have tested, Cisco Meraki, Cisco Aironet, Aruba, Ubiquiti, Xirrus, Aerohive and Mikrotik AP's in the same environment, against the same RADIUS server. Ruckus are the only AP's that exhibit this issue.

Can you explain that?

... or point us to an article that does.

Regards,

Chris Downing

[erin_mcclellen]

We are really loathe to shell out the kind of money they want for support when in the end we can just get pointed back to "we only validate up to 10.13".

One thing we're looking at is that we have other sites where the same devices have no issues. They are running 10.1.2.0 build 210. As a last ditch effort before just throwing some ubiquiti in as a stopgap, we're going to roll this site back to that version to see if it resolves the mac issues. Sadly a rollback entails a factory reset, so we have to find a time to do this w/o disruption and then after noting all the settings in the web UI, downgrade and re-enter it all by hand (plain text config files like cisco and juniper, who needs them!).

We have verbose logging from the mac side of things, but it's not entirely clear from that what is causing the drop. I can share with anyone interested.