iOS provisioning and keychain generation

Question

I'm using Xcode 4.3.1 on Mac OS X 10.7.3 trying to provision to iOS 5.1 phone. First I used the Development Provisioning Assistant to create a provisioning profile. After dragging/installing the profile in Organizer, it says "valid signing identity not found". I continued with the Development Provisioning Assistant, got a new Development Certificate, installed it. But it didn't help. It's still "valid signing identity not found". After reading this topic on google and other people's solutions, I deleted all keys in Keychain Access, walked through the Development Provisioning Assistant again, did everything it said, but still didn't fix the problem. So I thought I needed a fresh start again. I deleted all provisioning profiles, certificates, keys. Then I redid everything, but no use. I also tried "Add to portal" in the Organizer, which only generated 4 certificates but still no keys.

Should I restart my machine? Just kidding.

Answer 1

I've been there a couple of times where you are right now. So I tried to understan what was going on and documented it here (Understanding iOS Code Signing) (warning: tl;dr).

Its easy to make mistakes while "following" the steps listed on the portal, and understanding it can help you identify what went wrong.

Here's a quick checklist for you before you go reading the whole thing:

• Create a developer certificate from your mac.
• Create a provisioning profile on the portal, and make sure to include your developer certificate (created in the previous step) in that profile.
• Download and install the profile on your mac (must be same that was used in first step). (You can actually use it on other mac if you export the certificate, but lets not go there)

If you are doing this and still face the problem, you should try 'understanding' then :).