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Self Service not installing apps, "license not found" error, enormously persistent

  • November 26, 2025
  • 4 replies
  • 38 views
why00why
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Dear experts,

I joined here because of a issue that we cannot resolve after almost a month (yes..) of troubleshooting. 

The problem is as follows:

  • Jamf Pro with iPhones. No Computers etc.
  • Apps will not install from Self Service. The device history shows that the license for the app is not found. 
  • I looked everywhere, each history tab for devices, location, any changes or things that line up with when the issue came up, unable to pin point anything. It unfortunately just stopped working, seemingly out of nowhere, and I wish I had anything more precise to say about this. 

What we did so far:

  • renewed the VPP token as well as the .p7m server token file, taken from Apple Business Manager and uploaded them again in Jamf
  • made sure that the Apple IDs match, same email address used in ABM as in Jamf for Admin
  • as I saw in this thread, I looked for devices with no serial number but I didn’t find any. 
  • I also did everything from this thread, including deleting everything (devices and apps) from one location to see if that had any effect
  • I deleted some devices and re-enrolled them, no change. No device can install apps, neither with location set to none or with a location set. 
  • unchecked "Assign Content Purchased in Volume" box for many apps and re-checked it, saved again
  • I enabled debug mode and traffic logging for volume purchasing in the Jamf Pro Server Logs. I didn’t see anything that would indicate what is going on, but in each line where it says Name":"Application","productTypeId":8,"availableCount":350," that matches with the for example 350 licenses that are bought. The number also shows up as available in the mobile apps section!
  • used Apple configurator to see if it can manually push apps on a phone connected by cable. It recognized the VPP purchases, even showed the correct number of licenses, but the app install failed with exception unhandled.
  • reached out to Jamf Support, they wanted a Jamf Pro Summary and the token files, I sent all of it over. They did not find anything wrong with these and so asked for a zoom call where I shared my screen and we went all over the settings for volume purchasing. Nothing was apparently wrong or to be changed. Then they went on to reboot our Jamf Instance. When it was reachable again, the app downloads worked again for about 12 hours. Now it is back to failing with no license found. I informed them about this and I am waiting for them to reboot it again. It’s been almost a week just with Jamf support.

...I am at a complete loss here. It is extremely discouraging that even Support wasn’t able to resolve it in several business days, also that it worked briefly with no “hard” configuration change is not a good sign.

Can anyone help? Is there anything else we can do, look at, attempt? 

 

 

4 replies

thebrucecarter
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I don’t know if this is of any help, but we had this happen right after we did our migration from on-prem to cloud.  Jamf Support figured out that this was an artifact of briefly having the new cloud instance and the old on-prem instance temporarily both active at the same time.  The engineer who figured this out told us that it was a known issue.  He did some repairs to the database and it has been fine since.  I don’t know if this is at all related to your situation, but I thought I would throw it in here just in case it was somehow useful.

Not just A Bruce Carter, but THE Bruce Carter! 🤓
ktrojano
why00why
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  • why00why
  • Author
  • New Contributor
  • November 26, 2025

The engineer who figured this out told us that it was a known issue.  He did some repairs to the database and it has been fine since.  I don’t know if this is at all related to your situation, but I thought I would throw it in here just in case it was somehow useful.

thank you I also do not know if this is related to our issue, but I will mention it to support and ask for it to be escalated to engineering

Chubs
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  • Chubs
  • Jamf Heroes
  • November 26, 2025

I’ve seen this happen before too when the jamf server time sync is out of whack by more than 30 seconds from Apple’s servers.  Have you searched the volume content area and see if any licenses are “in use”?   

Also another thing - are you making this app available in self service or forcing the install?  Self Service license counts have to match (should probably exceed) the amount of devices scoped.  

I find your lack of faith disturbing
ktrojano
why00why
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  • why00why
  • Author
  • New Contributor
  • November 26, 2025

I’ve seen this happen before too when the jamf server time sync is out of whack by more than 30 seconds from Apple’s servers.  Have you searched the volume content area and see if any licenses are “in use”?   

Also another thing - are you making this app available in self service or forcing the install?  Self Service license counts have to match (should probably exceed) the amount of devices scoped.  

Is there any way I can see precisely which time each system uses? There is a time zone setting but it was not touched yet, although that would probably only fix major discrepancies by the hour and not seconds? 

 

Also, there are licenses “in use”, however I feel like some numbers are implausible in our Jamf, or at least I can’t make sense of them:

  • I added an app, VLC media player, just for testing purposes with this issue. I bought 500 licenses and within minutes (!) it showed some in use. I don’t even know how this would be possible since it was not set to forced/prompted install, and every. single. test phone I have here failed to install it. I guess I have to reach out to some users of the phones that allegedly use up a license and ask if they actually have this installed? If this is true, could it be a difference with the actual devices? I am hesitant because these are batches of iPhones that came new from a vendor who also added them in our Apple Business Manager. The phones are identical to a point where you can count the serial numbers up. I don’t see how one can install and one not, now of course, If one were a 13 Pro, one a 15, one an iPad and some iOS 26 and some not etc then I could see that, but they are all iPhone 15, all iOS 26, all identical. 
  • during the brief window earlier this week where installs “worked again” I was on a test phone and multiple apps were in the Self Service with the button reading “reinstall”, as it would for already installed apps. Some of these apps were not on the phone. I searched in the app drawer, I looked into the iOS settings where all apps, even system apps, should be listed with data usage etc and the apps in question were not there. I thought it was a fluke, and after a reboot it was right, but still. I clearly saw that, and if the Self Service assumes these are installed, and if that is inaccurate, on hundreds of devices, this could be a problem since it might over-count the “in use” apps.
  • these apps are “make available in self service” and then actually installed on the devices just as needed. However, we do have forced install for only the Self Service app itself, that also doesn’t work with “no license found” as all other apps. We always purchase more licenses as we have devices.
  • in the MDM section of the Apple Business Manager, it shows when Jamf “last contacted”, which is basically right now to the minute. So the Jamf instance must be communicating with the ABM, which is also proven by the fact that additional licenses show up in Jamf. I bought an unusual number of licenses for an app and that “63” was available in Jamf, it must have obtained that number from the ABM. 

...I still suspect some kind of location issue or something not being recognized by either ABM or Jamf’s servers because these ARE inconsistencies, right? Or am I missing something here? 

 

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