The MMS lost story

[jezek]

Failed MMS redownload progress report:

Because of unsafe apt operations, which makes crossbuilder & ubports-qa unsafe too, I've redirected my attention to nuntium, resulting in some commits to https://github.com/ubports/nuntium/pull/8. (Note: I can easily deploy nuntuim to phone without apt)

What was done?

My operator (and other?) resends multimedia message notifications ever 10 minutes, if notification is not marked as received. This resulted in new error message (when download fails) and notification sound every time. These new commits prevents this behavior.

Every notification comes with transaction-id, which is stored on download error and if new notification comes with the same transaction-id and there was a download error again, the error message will not be sent to telepathy again.

The only caveat is, that if the second download fails on another error as the first, then the second error will not be communicated (however no error description is communicated now, this will be added in future). I'll see, if this will need attention later.

To test these changes easier, I've added an transaction-id flag to nuntium-inject-push testing tool.

That's all for this week, see ya next time.

[lduboeuf]

@jezek Qt5.12 is devel ready since few hours, you can start update and continue to play with ubports-qa & crossbuilder.

For the notification being resent by the provider, this is not the case for me at least.

Thanks again for your implications

[jezek]

Failed MMS redownload progress report:

This week only nuntium PR got updated.

There was a problem with redownload after nuntium got restarted. After nunium restarted (on crash, or phone reboot), the redownload button from messaging-app didn't work. This was because of the button sends the redownload request to nuntium through dbus. And after nuntium restart, there was no one listening on dbus for the redownload signal. I've fixed this by spawning listeners for messages on modem identification. So the redownload now works even after phone restart.

Also the nuntium-inject-pust testing tool got update. It can now autodetect the end-point flag from nuntium logs using grep & sed commands.

[Keneda]

What a massive work done on this thread, @lduboeuf @jezek the masters of MMS

Hope for the work ready for OTA16, but no rush here, take the time you need.

[lduboeuf]

@keneda said in The MMS lost story:

What a massive work done on this thread, @lduboeuf @jezek the masters of MMS

Now you can delete my name, jezek is doing all the stuff

Hope for the work ready for OTA16, but no rush here, take the time you need.

I doubt it will, am i right @jezek ?

[Keneda]

@lduboeuf
What would'd be Don Quichotte without Sancho Panza

Not a problem if not in OTA16.

[jezek]

@lduboeuf said in The MMS lost story:

@keneda said in The MMS lost story:

Hope for the work ready for OTA16, but no rush here, take the time you need.

I doubt it will, am i right @jezek ?

hmm... I think I'm near end. There are 3-4 tasks to do till end. But sometimes a task is done 1-2 new emerge My guess, if everything goes smooth, 1 month.

[lduboeuf]

@jezek btw, can you add an empty commit or any piece of code to trigger build on telepathy-ofono and history-service ? They are still marked as failed and thus not accessible with ubports-qa

[jezek]

@lduboeuf said in The MMS lost story:

@jezek btw, can you add an empty commit or any piece of code to trigger build on telepathy-ofono and history-service ? They are still marked as failed and thus not accessible with ubports-qa

Done

[lduboeuf]

@jezek Can you sync with xenial branch for those 2 repos, JenkinsFile have been updated and should fix the build issue

[jezek]

@lduboeuf said in The MMS lost story:

@jezek Can you sync with xenial branch for those 2 repos, JenkinsFile have been updated and should fix the build issue

Done

[lduboeuf]

@jezek oups, still messaging-app to be built again...
So i am almost ready to test it
sudo ubports-qa list:

PR_nuntium_8 PR_telepathy-ofono_20 PR_telephony-service_20 PR_history-service_35 PR_messaging-app_260

[lduboeuf]

@jezek so fetch your messaging-app to test. It seems to work well ;-).

Do you differentiate a download Error with a "Cellular-data off" state ?
For the "data-off", it could be a simple message like on other platforms with a "Download" button.

Awesome work

[jezek]

@lduboeuf said in The MMS lost story:

@jezek oups, still messaging-app to be built again...

messaging-app updated

@lduboeuf said in The MMS lost story:

Do you differentiate a download Error with a "Cellular-data off" state ?
For the "data-off", it could be a simple message like on other platforms with a "Download" button.

In the code nuntium returns an error on first connection attempt (there are more stages), but I really don't know if different kind of trouble will cause different error type. I can assume, that if an error happens after first connection attempt, it is not cause of "Celular-data off" state. And I really don't have an idea, how to cause different cause of errors. The plan is to send the error text and/or type to messaging-app via the error message. Maybe then, we will spot the pattern. Meanwhile you can investigate (if you want) and try to cause & get some non "Cellurae-data off" error and then see the log (code producing download errors is here). Maybe, if we can't differentiate by error message, nuntium could ask someone on dbus, or see the config, what the state of cellular switch is and make a note about it in the error message.

Btw, I don't know how are other platforms are handling mms download errors.

[lduboeuf]

@jezek
for download error on other platforms, idk but the current error message is good enough i think.

For the "cellular-data" off case, it is displayed as a normal message
e.g:

But in that case, if cellular data is off, the click on the download should check for data on or prevent user...

In order to know if cellular data is off, you can query via dbus, example with command line:

dbus-send --session --print-reply \
    --dest=com.ubuntu.connectivity1 \
    /com/ubuntu/connectivity1/Private \
    org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Get \
string:com.ubuntu.connectivity1.Private \
	string:'MobileDataEnabled'

[jezek]

Failed MMS redownload progress report:

This week only nuntium PR got updated.

I've been working on message initialization. To keep nuntium message store (located in ~/.local/share/nuntium/store) tidy, some stored messages are checked with history-service and if they are marked as read or are deleted in history-service, then there is no need to store them in nuntium storage and will be deleted.

It's not a big change, cause I've been struggling with DBus calls to history-service (and with sending/receiving in general). But after some comments from @lduboeuf (with a dbus example) and reading some documentations and blog I have now better uderstanding of dbus. Thank you.

See you next week with new updates.

PS: If you wan to test, you have to install all PR's for this project using ubports-qa script. I'm trying to push only tested commits by myself and everything should be functioning.

[lduboeuf]

@jezek tests are fine ;-), awesome, still need some UI polishing, but works fine.

I wonder for the "cellular-data" dbus call if an interface marked as "private“ in the namespace is something that can/should be queried in numtium or elsewhere ?

[jezek]

Failed MMS redownload progress report:

This week some work on propagating error details from nuntium to messaging-app was done, 4PR's were updated:

• nuntium - Upon decoding mNotificationInd handle Expiry token (absolute/relative) and fill Expiry field as unix time. Propagate error description, expiry date and message size encoded as json to telepathy-ofono.
• telepathy-ofono - forward the error message details in headers to history service.
• history-service - save the error message status to messageStatus and details (encoded as json) to messageText field in db.
• messaging-app - change error message detection, cause now the message can have a non empty text (with error details).
  Note: The branch can't be compiled, I've tracked the error and created issue. After it's fixed (fix is trivial) I will rebase the branch it should pass the CI checks (I hope, localy with crossbuilder it worked).
  Note: The expiry date could be wrongly encoded, haven't tested on real incoming messages. Some sources say the expiry date is encoded as Size + token + data, some Size + token + size + data. Majority and OpenMediaAssociation(?) documentation said it was the first case (s+t+d), so I've done it that way, but only tests in real world conditions will show. So keep an eye on the Expire field.

@lduboeuf Now is the time to ask for some help. Could you help with the messaging-app's UI part? Error details are saved in text field, encoded as json. Currently there are 3 fields:

• "Description" (string) - just a text with error description.
• "Expire" (string) - time in RFC3339 format, when the message expires at MMS provider.
• "Size" (int) - size in bytes (?) of the message

I'm planing (as you suggested) to add a "CellularDataOn" (bool) field (have a better name) which could indicate if the cellular data was on/off at download time.

If any other error detail, that could be propagated from nuntium, comes to your mind, say it, I will try to add.

[AppLee]

@jezek said in The MMS lost story:

"CellularDataOn" (bool) field (have a better name)

Usually for boolean I use "isMyState" or "hasMyProperty", in this case I would have used hasCellularData or hasMobileData (the first one is my favorite as the toggle switch has the same label in the settings.

[lduboeuf]

@jezek said in The MMS lost story:

Failed MMS redownload progress report:

Note: The branch can't be compiled, I've tracked the error and created issue. After it's fixed (fix is trivial) I will rebase the branch it should pass the CI checks (I hope, localy with crossbuilder it worked).

fixed, you can rebase now

Note: The expiry date could be wrongly encoded, haven't tested on real incoming messages. Some sources say the expiry date is encoded as Size + token + data, some Size + token + size + data. Majority and OpenMediaAssociation(?) documentation said it was the first case (s+t+d), so I've done it that way, but only tests in real world conditions will show. So keep an eye on the Expire field.

the one defined here is not working ?: https://github.com/ubports/nuntium/blob/38940464d532a145412c47d8901c1a74fb662eff/mms/decoder.go#L405

@lduboeuf Now is the time to ask for some help. Could you help with the messaging-app's UI part? Error details are saved in text field, encoded as json. Currently there are 3 fields:

• "Description" (string) - just a text with error description.
• "Expire" (string) - time in RFC3339 format, when the message expires at MMS provider.
• "Size" (int) - size in bytes (?) of the message

Yes for sure , how i can commit to your PR ?

Edit: For the expiry date, i just had a case where Expire field is empty in json