Retina Macbook Pros, wifi and waking from sleep

plawrence
Contributor II

Hi all

Looking for other users with 802.1x wifi login window profiles and laptops.

We have a deployment of Retina Macbook Pros (early 2015 model) running El Capitan (10.11.3) that are experiencing a strange wireless problem. When users travel from one wireless location to another (e.g. home to work or work to home) and wake their computer, there are no wireless networks visible when clicking on the wifi icon in the menu bar. The machine doesn’t populate any wireless networks in the Wifi Menu Extra for up to 10 minutes.

  • Our laptops connect to work wifi using an 802.1x wireless profile with ‘Use as a login window configuration’ ticked
  • This doesn’t occur when roaming between access points on the same wireless SSID
  • The issue doesn’t occur to everyone
  • The issue doesn’t occur on older model hardware (non-Retina Macbook Pros)
  • Removing and re-installing the wireless profile fixes the issue temporarily, but it eventually comes back
  • I haven’t been able to replicate the issue when connecting to both networks manually (e.g. without the work wireless profile installed)
  • Updating to 10.11.4 doesn’t fix the problem
  • Running “/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -s” from the terminal shows the available wireless networks even when they are not visible in the Wifi Menu Extra
  • There are no obvious entries in /var/log/system.log at the time of the issue
  • I’ve turned off DarkWakes using “pmset -a darkwakes 0” on these machines to resolve another issue where they were waking up constantly while asleep to talk to Bonjour devices

Does anyone have similar machines with similar configurations? I’d love to hear the experiences of others.

2 REPLIES 2

rhoward
Contributor

Have you tried removing the /Library/Preferences/System Configuration/ preferences that control wifi? Does it happen when the machines are first imaged? Also what version of the JSS are you running? There is a known bug with the login window pane as of 9.82.

plawrence
Contributor II

@rhoward

Thanks for the reply. I've tried removing the wireless profile, clearing out the plists in /Library/Preferences/System Configuration/ and then re-adding the wireless profile. It fixes the issue temporarily, but users that we have tried this on report the issue re-occurring again within a week.

Our JSS is running 9.91, can you elaborate on the login window bug you mentioned and what it affects?