Help with black screen on IPad

[FOOincognita]

• Web Browser: Chrome, Safari
• Local OS: IPadOS 14.4, IPad Air 4th gen.
• Remote OS: Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04 (I have tried all 3)
• Remote Architecture: AMD64
• code-server --version:
• 1.408-vsc1.32.0 with Ubuntu 16.04
• 3.4.0 & 3.9.0 with Ubuntu 18.04 & Ubuntu 20.04 (all combinations)
• Google Cloud Platform VM Instance (32GB SSD, 4 cores, 8GB RAM, HTTPS/HTTP traffic enabled)

Howdy! I am a university student, and Code-Server would be absoluetly perfect for me so that I could have a remote instance of VS Code for when I am away from my main PC. Unfortunately, I can only gte it to work on other PCs, and not my IPad. If I could get it working on my IPad, it would seriously be a life-saver.

Please keep in mind I have incredibly little experience with linux besides C++ compilation through WSL, and Code-server basic install and run, but the instructions on this GitHub for authentication or SSH are pure gibberish to me, so maybe that's my issue?

I have looked all over YouTube, this GitHub, message boards, and more, but I can't seem to resolve the black screen issue (allows me to enter password, but then goes to black screen with webpage fully loaded). Code-Server is runny seamlessly for any of my PC browsers, though, whenever I try to access the VM through my IPad on any browser, I get the same issue; It will not show anything other than a black screen after correct password entry.

I have seen other say its an HTTPS issue, something about authentication errors specific to the IPad, but I honestly only have experience with C++, and that's honesty it; I have no clue how to go about fixing that.

Now, I found an app called "Servereditor for code-server" that allows you to pay for a pre-built instance, or allows you to connect to a self-host. The paid server connects just fine, but it is missing the most important feature; access to bash for code compilation and page installs. When I try to connect to my self-hosted server via the URL, it brings up the password screen, then just says "Invalid Password", even if I copy and paste the password directly from cloud console...I am out of ideas and was hoping maybe I missed a post somewhere where someone found a way to fix it?

Please let me know, and thank you for your time!

[jsjoeio]

Hey @FOOincognita - sorry to hear you've run into some issues with code-server on iPad!

We would love to help you figure this out. I'm going to move this over to our Discussions page.

[jsjoeio]

There's a few things we can try:

• can you try running code-server with --log debug? More details here and then post the logs here.
• there could be errors in the browser that might help. unfortunately the only app i know that gives you that is paid $6.99 called Inspect Browser. there may be other solutions to get access to the logs but you'd have to google it
• if you provide reproduction steps for how you set up code-server with GCP (I haven't gone through this yet), I can try doing that myself and seeing if I get the same error

[TheGreatestJannet]

Just to let other people know if you have an iMac you can connect the iPad to the iMac and use the developer tools in safari to get the console from the iPad.

[TheGreatestJannet]

I have the same issue as OP on an iPad Air 2 with a letsencrypt HTTPS certificate. I’m also running iPadOS 14.4. I’m using the linuxserver docker image as my server is running on ARM64. Any idea how I would enable logging there?

[TheGreatestJannet]

I don’t seem to have a websocket request.

[TheGreatestJannet]

I’ve solved it! It seems that using nginx auth basic breaks code server on iPad and so does my CSP for some reason even though both work perfectly on every other browser...

[TheGreatestJannet]

Here is my current nginx config that works perfectly on Safari and Firefox:

server{
        listen 80;
        server_name code-server.server.org;

        # Uncomment to redirect HTTP to HTTPS
        return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

server {
    listen 443;
    listen [::]:443;
    server_name code-server.server.org;

        add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains" always;
        add_header Content-Security-Policy "default-src 'self'; script-src 'self' 'unsafe-eval' 'unsafe-inline'; connect-src 'self' wss://code-server.server.org extensions.coder.com; img-src 'self' raw.githubusercontent.com dev.$
        add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
        add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
        add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;
        add_header Referrer-Policy "strict-origin";
        add_header Permissions-Policy "geolocation=(),midi=(),sync-xhr=(),microphone=(),camera=(),magnetometer=(),gyroscope=(),fullscreen=(self),payment=()";
        add_header Expect-CT "enforce, max-age=3600";

    location / {
      proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8445/;
      proxy_set_header Host $host;
      proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
      proxy_set_header Connection upgrade;
      proxy_set_header Accept-Encoding gzip;
    }

    #auth_basic "Restricted Content";
    #auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/.htpasswd;

    ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/certs/wildcard.server.org/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/certs/wildcard.server.org/key.pem;
    include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot
}

Auth basic breaking websockets seems to be a Safari limitation: #1348.

Unsafe-eval seems required to get text colouring in Safari and Chrome. Is there a way to prevent this? It seems like a pretty big security risk to allow it. Firefox doesn't seem to require it.

Finally, I can't seem to get the onscreen keyboard to show up on my iPad. If it does pop up it seems to move the whole screen up making it very hard or impossible to see what you are typing. Should I open a new issue for this? Thank you very much for your help!

[jsjoeio]

I can't seem to get the onscreen keyboard to show up on my iPad. If it does pop up it seems to move the whole screen up making it very hard or impossible to see what you are typing

Can you take a look at #979? There might be a helpful tip in there. Although I will say, based on my experience using code-server on an iPad, an external keyboard is the best way to use it.

[code-asher]

Nice find on the basic auth issue!

I'm not sure about unsafe-eval, might be something we should look into.