How can I troubleshoot broken SMS?

ezst036

Hello,

My SMS (picture messages) has stopped working again, what happens is when I try to send a picture the spinner just never stops.

Fun times since the newest version 11.2 of the ubports-installer no longer contains the checkbox option for a clean wipe user data install. So my only option for fixing this is completely gone.

What do I do?

Its a Oneplus Nord 10 5G, with stable 24.04-1.

uxes

@ezst036 if you have issues downloading images in messages that may be issue of turned on wifi when mms is not working

gpatel-fr

@ezst036

what do you mean by 'picture messages' exactly ? If you have problems sending MMS specifically, check that it's not behind Wifi, that's a known problem (but it should not have worked before anyway, this problem is dragging for years). If it works normally when connected to cellular network, there is a possible workaround.

If you have problem sending even text messages (plain SMS) with Wifi disabled, it may be that your provider has changed their connection parameters. Could you check with a working phone (Android or IPhone) ?

If you want to read the debug information of ofonod, it's possible to enable it but this is not a light reading.

@ezst036 said in How can I troubleshoot broken SMS?:

since the newest version 11.2 of the ubports-installer no longer contains the checkbox option for a clean wipe user data install. So my only option for fixing this is completely gone.

I can't imagine how wiping out all user data could fix this problem.

ezst036

@gpatel-fr said in How can I troubleshoot broken SMS?:

If you want to read the debug information of ofonod, it's possible to enable it but this is not a light reading.

ofonod sounds wonderful, I have been struggling with this issue on and off for quite some time and I have had exactly nothing by way of troubleshooting so far.

Where this is going is I need to create a bug report but I am not interested in just creating something on gitlab that says its broke can you fix it?

I do have wifi disabled (its grey) and cellular data is on (switch is green). I can access websites currently.(if it matters)

How can I access ofonod?

@gpatel-fr said in How can I troubleshoot broken SMS?:

I can't imagine how wiping out all user data could fix this problem.

I have always interpreted the wipe option that is in the ubports installer as a clean wipe of everything on the phone(settings, etc), not just removing what is in one or two folders. Admittedly I know much less about linux on a phone than I do on a linux desktop, have been a linux user for over a decade. Also troubleshooting desktops is a little better well documented in a lot of different places than these phones. I can only tell you what has happened. Any time I have lost the ability to send photos through text, I back up my data and phone book, do a full reinstall/wipe with ubports installer, and back to functioning properly it goes. For a while. Then I have to wipe again. But now I can't do that anymore.

My expectation currently is that I should be able to open the camera app from the side bar, take a photo of something with the phone's camera, then go to the text messaging app and send the photo to someone in my contacts list. To be clear, this functionality does work after I do a clean wipe. It just stops working intermittently and I don't know why.

@uxes said in How can I troubleshoot broken SMS?:

@ezst036 if you have issues downloading images in messages that may be issue of turned on wifi when mms is not working

Thank you. Currently receiving photos does not function either, and my wifi is disabled. If I tell someone to send me a photo, its just nothing. Nothing happens. No warning, no click here to download, nada. It's just dead silent as if nothing ever happened.

lduboeuf

@ezst036 Have you pinged the porter about it ? No idea why it used to work and now not except if the provider has changed anything meanwhile. So you have updated your device ? You could try daily channel in case
Also may be usefull to ask in device forum in case: https://forums.ubports.com/category/119/oneplus-nord-n10

gpatel-fr

@ezst036 said in How can I troubleshoot broken SMS?:

How can I access ofonod?

That's the spirit, looking under the hood

you can use 'sudo systemctl edit ofono' and create the following drop-in:

# /etc/systemd/system/ofono.service.d/override.conf
[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/ofonod -d -P ril --nodetach

and do the usual 'sudo systemctl daemon-reload' and 'sudo systemctl restart ofono'.

If it has bad consequences, remove the override file and reload as above.

After you have saved a log (seen using 'journalctl -e -u ofono'), remove the override anyway since it will eat at your disk space a bit too fast.

You can save the log as a text file also and attach it here, no warranty it will be read, understood and diagnosed any faster though.

gpatel-fr

@ezst036 said in How can I troubleshoot broken SMS?:

version 11.2 of the ubports-installer no longer contains the checkbox option for a clean wipe user data install.

I just checked and this is not correct; after clicking 'Install' there is in the following screen a checkbox to wipe personal data (it is not checked by default)

ezst036

@lduboeuf Hello, good to see you again.

I have not yet pinged the porter about this but I have seen this problem on multiple phones. I am currently now on a OP Nord but I saw the same issue on a FP4. Also saw it on a Pixel 3.

I may try the daily channel soon.

Things have gotten worse now, actually. I was on 20.04 as of Friday. I cannot receive regular text based text messages now. But I can still send messages out, if I call and ask. The text based will be received successfully.

ezst036

@gpatel-fr Thank you, I will do these things a little later today.

I'm not really too worried about disk space at this point. I feel like once I have something tangible and I can put in a bug report I'm going to try to do a full reset and wipeout anyways. Nuking it from orbit has always worked for me.

@gpatel-fr said in How can I troubleshoot broken SMS?:

@ezst036 said in How can I troubleshoot broken SMS?:

version 11.2 of the ubports-installer no longer contains the checkbox option for a clean wipe user data install.

I just checked and this is not correct; after clicking 'Install' there is in the following screen a checkbox to wipe personal data (it is not checked by default)

Oof, I can see it in your screenshot. on my screen it looks invisible. I checked on where it is and it lights up. Thank you. But still, I do not want to be in this cycle anymore. I want to try to troubleshoot this with logs or something, put in a bug ticket first.

ezst036

Interesting. As soon as I restarted the daemon with 'sudo systemctl daemon-reload' and 'sudo systemctl restart ofono', a flood of plain text messages instantly came in. They're all dated for now, but they're probably from over the course of the last several days.

The last text message that my phone thinks I received was three days ago, 1/12/26. That's not all of a sudden because everybody texted me all at once this moment, especially at this time of the night.

Hopefully these logs contain some super magic.

I hadn't had a chance until now to get to this.

gpatel-fr

@ezst036 said in How can I troubleshoot broken SMS?:

a flood of plain text messages instantly came in. They're all dated for now, but they're probably from over the course of the last several days.

enabling the debug is really noisy and fills the log at a serious pace. As the systemd journal has a limited size (did not remember that in my previous post), it will restrict the duration of data saved by deleting old information.

wally

@ezst036 Hmm. I thought we might have the same problem - I'm also using Oneplus N10, and lost SMS receipt, but not sending, upon upgrading to 20.04 OTA 11.

I was excited to try the two terminal commands you referenced, but still can' receive SMS, so maybe we have different problems? Did yours stop working after upgrading to OTA-11? Do you ever get a strange glitch where upon receipt of a notification, the phone freezes and the phone screen starts rapidly flashing, and won't power off? If not I'll go back to assuming my problem is unique and my particular OP N10 is just cursed

(Also, I always have had the odd MMS that just wasn't received, though mostly they work for me.. often the right APN setting is the trick if they aren't working at all, maybe two different APNs, one for Internet, one for MMS. Sometimes MMS used to break in a way that a reboot didn't fix, but systemctl --user restart nuntium would. But I'm pretty confident MMS issues are totally separate from SMS issues.)

ezst036

@gpatel-fr

Thank you. How can I basically clear this file? (I'm gonna wipe the phone anyways, so might as well get a small/targeted "clean" log file)

What I want to do is enable the extra logging, reboot the phone, send a picture message and let it sit for like 30 seconds, and then use that log file to create a bug report on Gitlab that SMS keeps breaking over and over again.

If there was any other troubleshooting that could be done I suspect someone else would've mentioned it. So I'm going to assume this log is good enough and start there.

I appreciate you and others sticking with me.

ezst036

Hello @wally,

It could be that we do have a variation of the same problem it just manifests itself in a slightly different way.

My main problems are related to MMS, picture messaging. I've only had plain-text messaging break on me once and that was when upgrading from 20.04 to 24.04.

I have seen slow downs when messages received, it doesn't happen very often though. More often though is I see slow downs when trying to open either the phone app or the text messaging app. It just stops and sits for like 10-15 seconds before it'll do anything. The phone app will say "initializing......" at the top of the screen.

gpatel-fr

@ezst036 said in How can I troubleshoot broken SMS?:

How can I basically clear this file?

the simplest way is to 'rm' the file (using sudo), do a 'sudo systemctl daemon-reload', and restart the ofono daemon. Extra logging will then stop. You can attach the log file here if you save it as a .txt file.

@ezst036 said in How can I troubleshoot broken SMS?:

If there was any other troubleshooting that could be done I suspect someone else would've mentioned it.

there are probably other steps, but the first one is usually the logging.

gpatel-fr

@wally said in How can I troubleshoot broken SMS?:

I was excited to try the two terminal commands you referenced

Huh, I missed your post; if by these 'two terminal commands' you are writing about the ones I posted, these commands are just commands to try to debug what could happen on a hardware that I don't have in my hands. Not intended to fix anything.

wally

@ezst036 MMS always mostly worked for me though, and then both MMS and SMS stopped at once. Plus the other strange stuff with the flickering. I think my weirdo problem is separate.
I do recommend trying systemctl --user restart nuntium though, just in case. It's quick to try at least. I don't really understand why that would fix things when a reboot doesn't, but it always did for me when I'd see no sign of an incoming MMS, and it has worked for others on the forum too.

@gpatel-fr Thanks for the reply, but I meant the daemon-reload and restart ofono commands that ezst036 mentioned.

gpatel-fr

@wally said in How can I troubleshoot broken SMS?:

trying systemctl --user restart nuntium

well, that could point to a bug in this service. Logs, logs !

@wally said in How can I troubleshoot broken SMS?:

I meant the daemon-reload and restart ofono

part of the commands necessary to enable debug log output of ofono. It will not and can not fix a problem.

wally

@gpatel-fr Thanks for the help! I don't have the MMS issue anymore, so can't provide logs. There's history of this in the forum, going back to when it was an initctl command under 16.04. In another thread Lionel theorized that perhaps nuntium was being started too early in the boot process, but again nobody provided logs. I tried to recreate the issue on a broken old phone just for the logs, but failed.

Thanks for the clarification on the other commands. The reason I was hopeful it might fix my situation was having read:
@ezst036 said in How can I troubleshoot broken SMS?:

Interesting. As soon as I restarted the daemon with 'sudo systemctl daemon-reload' and 'sudo systemctl restart ofono', a flood of plain text messages instantly came in.

I really appreciate people looking for the root of an issue like you are, and recognize that even if the restart-nuntium command works, it's a quick fix that doesn't help anyone solve any underlying bugs unless logs can be provided.

gpatel-fr

@wally

I think that the 'flood' can be explained because the debug output is really noisy. That's why it's not enabled by default