Axolotl - All messages & contacts gone after "Your registration is faulty. Please consider to register again."
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SOLVED (if you have a back-up of db.sql and contacts.yml). See last post.
Today, Axolotl showed the error message: "Your registration is faulty. Please consider to register again."
I clicked on the option of this error message to unregister and the registered again.
Now all old messages / chat history and contacts are gone! Can you help me how I can retrieve/show these again? Thank you very much!
System:
Volla Phone
Axolotl v0.9.4 -
@gt Unfortunatly you loose your history whenever you sign up with a new device, I believe that since signal thought your registration was faulty, it treated your new registration as a new device, making your old messages accessible, and I don't think there are any ways to retrieve them using axolotl, a feature signal has, is the ability to backup your text messages, but it requires a password, Axolotl doesn't have that feature as of yet, and because of the way that background services work, I think it'd only work if you manually backed them up?
I may be wrong, but that's how I understand it as of current.
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@phoenixlandpirat Oh, that's pretty bad news.
I have a manual back-up via ADB from end of December and just made a new one (after re-registration). The messages seem to be still on the device, so is there really no way to make them again visible in Axolotl?
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@gt I might be wrong, but my understanding of it, is that theres probably an encryption key that's been replaced.
you'll have to wait or ask someone who works on the axolotl app to make sure this is correct, or to get the correct answer, but my understanding is that, your old messages could only be seen if you have the old encryption key, if you had that key, your messages would be accessible and they would show up correctly, however, since the encryption key is new, the old messages can't be unencrypted, and thus they don't show up, if you could find and replace your new encryption key with your old encryption key, you would see your old messages, however you wouldn't be able to send or receive new messages.
Might be completely wrong here, but from my understanding of signal, this makes the most sense from what I've heard, could be very very wrong, software isn't always so straight forward.
@nanu-c might be able to provide you with a better answer.
Also dont be scared to report it as a bug on Github
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@phoenixlandpirat Thanks, I added a bug report (same info as here in the forum) at https://github.com/nanu-c/axolotl/issues/317
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@gt This isn't related with Axolotl, Signal servers were overloaded this afternoon, situation is back to normal now. However, the message is misleading, we should probably reword it.
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@fla Okay, does this mean that I should have waited and it was wrong to re-register? But what shall I do to get my messages and contacts back?
Is it maybe possible to copy the old registration/key files from the old December back-up on the device? The idea would be to copy over the files from the Dec2020 back-up of the folder "local/share/.storage/identity" folder, or anything similar. Do you think this could work to get back to the situation before re-registration?
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@Fla : I also saw this message 'your registration is faulty' today. Afterwards, I was unable to send messages. A red triangle with exclamation mark appeared. The previous time I had this error message, a secure session reset solved it. However, not this time. Also a red triangle next to secure session reset. I also restarted app, switched network off and on, restarted device. Any ideas what I can do?
EDIT: I managed to reset encryption for all contacts. Sometimes needed to try several times because at first red triangle appeared again. Still have trouble to send. Are you sure the server overload is not happening anymore? -
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@gt : Could you tag this thread with Axolotl please? This way it will be searchable under this tag for other users. Thanks!
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@alter said in Axolotl - All messages & contacts gone after "Your registration is faulty. Please consider to register again.":
Lost all my messages also.
Were you able to get your mesages back?
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@gt : No. When you re-register on Axolotl/ Signal, the key used for decryption of your old messages is lost as it gets replaced. This makes your old messages inaccessible (I believe they're still on the device). A while ago I opened a request on Axolotl Github for a kind a backup or restore feature. Ideally, re-registering would not mean losing your old messages. It would be nice if, at re-registering, the old key is kept and users had the option to import in Axolotl the old messages with this old key. A backup feature would also be good when one changes phone.
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@alter Thanks, that's pretty bad. In my case, I have the key in a back-up from end of December. Can I wrangle the old (=correct) key somehow into the current Axolotl file tree?
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@gt : I don't know. I imagine Axolotl only allows 1 key as this is normally what is needed. In this case, there are 2 batches of messages that each have their own decryption key. Perhaps manually the old messages could be decrypted with the old key, and the new key added. I'm just a regular user. This is a question for developers.
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Apparently, Signal servers are still experiencing problems. According to Signal's Twitter (see Signal.org for link) due to huge influx of new customers, and capacity needed for that. People may experience problems sending messages.
There's also a message on status.signal.org
@Fla : perhaps a link to the status page could be added in Axolotl, e.g. ”Server status: [link]”?
EDIT: yesterday evening, I was able to send messages again. No red triangle with exclamation mark. -
Since installing the latest version of Axolotl on FP2 yesterday, the program crashes immediately after opening (when showing the chat screen). Tried a clean reinstall and problem persists. Is this a problem related to Signal server overload, is it a FP2 problem, a UT problem or a bug in the recent Axolotl version ?
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@nogoogle said in Axolotl - All messages & contacts gone after "Your registration is faulty. Please consider to register again.":
Since installing the latest version of Axolotl on FP2 yesterday, the program crashes immediately after opening (when showing the chat screen). Tried a clean reinstall and problem persists. Is this a problem related to Signal server overload, is it a FP2 problem, a UT problem or a bug in the recent Axolotl version ?
Can you please send me your logs in PM?
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@fla sorry for the stupid question but in which directory do I find the logfile ?
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@nogoogle this isn't a stupid question, the easiest way is to use the loggerviewer application. Then search for textsecure.
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@gt I did some experimentation how to get my old messages and contacts back. Here is the solution, which works (with a little draw-back):
- I used the new re-registered Axolotl profile (all files in .config/textsecure.nanuc and .local/share/textsecure.nanuc) as basis.
- Then I replaced the database db.sql file with the old db.sql from my December back-up. (Apparently, Axolotl deletes all old messages from the db.sql after re-registration. On the other hand, attachments remain in the profile).
- Then I copied the contacts.yml from the back-up to the config folder of the new profile.
This works fine, I see all my messages and all contacts. The only draw-back is that I can only write a message to a contact AFTER this contact has written a new message to me. Apparently, the other person has to re-initiate the secure connection. I can live with this draw-back, as it is a matter of time that all (relevant) contacts will be working again.
