Cannot get APs to join on bridge nor through Device Auth

[mowright]

Hello, I have 2 9124AXE-B I am trying to set up and get mesh working on. I am using a 9800 on version 17.12.5. I cannot get the mesh tab to show up or even get the ap in bridge mode, I have the mac in the Device Authentication mac address list like such, c8:28:e5:3a:e6:cc, as well as Authorize APs against MAC enabled under AP policy but the ap will not join back to the controller, i thought maybe it was the AP itself but i tried a different one and could not get it to join back after turning those settings on even in local mode with the mac address in the list. Any ideas? 

[mowright]

I have that mac in there which is the ethernet and is it not working. I followed what those instructions you sent said for the MAC AP authorization List - Local and it is not working. 

[Mark Elsen]

  - @mowright    Checkout the controller's configuration with the CLI command : show tech wireless
                          and feed the output from that into Wireless Config Analyzer
                                 (do not use a single  show tech-support for the above procedure)

                           If that's all ok then troubleshoot the joining process for the access point
                           further with instructions from :
                                  https://logadvisor.cisco.com/logadvisor/wireless/9800/9800APJoin

 M.

[mowright]

@Mark Elsen Once i get the output from the analyzer what should i be looking out for issues?

[Mark Elsen]

  - @mowright   For instance when downloading the excel version , all errors red flagged in the
                         wlc_results tab must be corrected.

  M.

[Rich R]

It's the ethernet MAC but as per my other reply - it's the format you have wrong - it must be lower case, hex only, no separators.

[Rich R · Accepted solution]

> I have the mac in the Device Authentication mac address list like such, c8:28:e5:3a:e6:cc
@mowright the documentation is very clear - the MAC address must be entered all lower case, no punctuation (no dots, no colons, no spaces) otherwise the MAC address will not be matched correctly!
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/wireless/catalyst-9800-series-wireless-controllers/215100-join-mesh-aps-to-catalyst-9800-wireless.html

It's an enhancement request to support other formats but it's considered a very low priority to implement - you must only use the bare format for now.

[mowright]

This is it! I had read that too but I completely just read it as a older version you only had to do so. Thank you!

[Rich R]

You're welcome <smile>