UAG Client components fail to work on a Macintosh computer

When accessing a UAG server from a Macintosh computer, you might run into this error:

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“Client compliance for site access cannot be verified. There is a problem verifying the identity of the site. This might affect your site experience, depending on corporate access policy.”

On a Macintosh computer, UAG uses a special version of the client components, written in Java (as opposed to the regular client components, which are Active-X components). To troubleshoot this, you need to open the Java console, and see what it says. To do so:

1. Open the Java Preferences utility, normally located in /Applications/Utilities/Java/J2SE 5.0

2. Enable tracing, logging, and Show console:

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Within the console, type the command -verbose to make sure the console logs anything with a high level of detail. The extra verbose log should be able to shed some light on what’s going on. For example, in a recent case, the log was showing this:

Wed Oct 03 11:09:54 2012 Installing file /Users/crawbil/Forefront UAG Remote Access Agent/securesharechrobinsoncom/secureshareportal1/agent_mac_helper_64.jar
Wed Oct 03 11:09:55 2012 5145 bytes copied ...
Wed Oct 03 11:09:55 2012 Verifying agent signature.
Wed Oct 03 11:09:55 2012 Fatal error: signature does not exist!

Although this would lead to a generic error (like in the screenshot above), the text in the log actually shows exactly what’s up, and the file name shown, agent_mac_helper_64.jar, is the cause of the problem. The problem here stems from the fact that UAG does not have a 64 bit version of the Java client components for Mac (or Linux, for that matter). Modern Macs do run 64 bit by default, so for those, the only thing one can do is configure the browser to run in 32 bit. To do, follow these steps:

  1. Click the “Finder” icon on the dock at the bottom of the screen.
  2. Select “Applications” at the left side of the Safari window.
  3. Press and hold the “Control” key on the keyboard and click the “Safari” icon.
  4. Click “Get Info” in the menu that appears.
  5. Click the “Open in 32-bit Mode” check box.
  6. Close the Safari Info window.
  7. Quit Safari by pressing "Cmd-Q" and then reopen Safari.

Similar actions can be taken on other applications, like FireFox.