MMS success and failure

ronbillock

@rik I had created a group on my wife's phone that included my wife, her sister, and our 2 daughters. I sent a picture to them with a text message saying it was a test and asked them to reply to the message with a picture of their own. My wife's sister just replied to the group message with 3 pics and some text. It came through just fine. It seems that as long as it is in response to that same group or that group thread then it is OK.
A problem I believe this creates is that the only access to this group they have, in order for my wife to get the message, is by responding to that specific thread. I am curious, if one of them were to delete the thread and then send a message to the same members (a new thread) will my wife then receive it or will we be back to where we started? I am waiting to hear from the other recipients. Also if any one of them were to add an additional person I am not sure what will happen since they will not be in the group I established? I guess one step at a time.

Keneda

@ronbillock
I edited your post so it be more readable with all that code, use code tags

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in order to from now .

rik

@ronbillock said in MMS success and failure:

@rik I had created a group on my wife's phone that included my wife, her sister, and our 2 daughters. I sent a picture to them with a text message saying it was a test and asked them to reply to the message with a picture of their own. My wife's sister just replied to the group message with 3 pics and some text. It came through just fine. It seems that as long as it is in response to that same group or that group thread then it is OK.

A problem I believe this creates is that the only access to this group they have, in order for my wife to get the message, is by responding to that specific thread. I am curious, if one of them were to delete the thread and then send a message to the same members (a new thread) will my wife then receive it or will we be back to where we started?

I am waiting to hear from the other recipients. Also if any one of them were to add an additional person I am not sure what will happen since they will not be in the group I established? I guess one step at a time.

I think MMS is not smart enough to know if someone deleted the thread or not. As I understand as long as the group members are the same then it should deliver correctly if you have the group thread on the receiving UT phone. Think of it like this: MMS doesn't really know what a "group" is, the message itself just itemizes all phone numbers at the beginning of it (sorry you weren't able to see the raw text, that should work with wget but regardless it seems you are getting there now). So it isn't like "Telegram" or "Whatsapp" or "Signal" that has a concept of true "groups" that people can join and leave. Instead it is just a container for a set number of phone numbers: any change to those itemized numbers means a "different group". IF things were working correctly, then each time there was a different set of phone numbers a different group message thread would be created. But as you are seeing the BUG is that no group message thread is automatically created. This means you will unfortunately need to try again with wget on failed MMS downloads to see what phone numbers are there, manually make the MMS group (message thread), then download again to populate that message thread. A BIG headache for you, but if you do it right you will at least be able to get all MMS messages. And in time you won't be getting infinite variations on who the group members are and things should settle down (just adding messages to existing group threads). And then in time hopefully UT messages app gets smarter with regard to being able to auto-create the MMS group thread. I don't know if @jezek has this planned or not at this time.

So, if you want to try again with wget (finding the http address of the failed download from Log Viewer in nuntium.log we can see if we can help you dig through how to identify the various phone numbers in it to manually create the group thread). In fact, try this process of wget on a MMS group message you successfully downloaded, then it may be more apparent how to read it. They shouldn't be blank, if so something else is causing confusion.

Finally, just noting that MMS Group Messages are far from supported / polished in UT. Any chance you can convince your contacts to join Telegram (best support on UT)? Then you can get the messages on your desktop as well, etc. and it is more secure than MMS. No I haven't convinced my family members to do it yet, either

StandUpMobile

@rik @Fizz @jezek
Sorry guys ... don't check in here often. Yes, I am also experiencing the "Invalid URL" ...
I believe this is a nuntium bug and raised an issue here
The issue was also experienced by @notkit and there was a hint on where to look for the issue here
Since it is not happening to everyone, my current guess is that the parsing of the URL for those with a PROXY is breaking something: @fizz and I have proxy, don't think you or others do @rik? Either that or the port? (although since its :80 ... I have tried without it and had same results).

Fizz

@rik said in MMS success and failure:

So, if you want to try again with wget (finding the http address of the failed download from Log Viewer in nuntium.log we can see if we can help you dig through how to identify the various phone numbers in it to manually create the group thread). In fact, try this process of wget on a MMS group message you successfully downloaded, then it may be more apparent how to read it. They shouldn't be blank, if so something else is causing confusion.

I'm happy to try this, but i don't understand what url i should use. In the numtium log i posted above, the only url i see if http://mms.bell.ca/mms/wapenc . When i try a wget on that i get a 405 error, method not allowed. So i presume i am missing something. What do i need to do?

-Fizz

rik

@fizz said in MMS success and failure:

I'm happy to try this, but i don't understand what url i should use. In the numtium log i posted above, the only url i see if http://mms.bell.ca/mms/wapenc.

The http address is in your log as part of the "hex dump", but you are experiencing that error where it says Invalid URL: '' so that is this different bug that @StandUpMobile is indicating is tracked here: https://github.com/ubports/nuntium/issues/14

If I attempt to "piece together" the http address from the hex dump part of your message, it seems it is this: http://mmsc2.get.bell.ca/cloudmmsc?l=f95c4f5dbdc28f499f619d44-1

Can you try, with wifi DISCONNECTED, these possibilities from terminal?

best guess:
wget http://mmsc2.get.bell.ca/cloudmmsc?l=f95c4f5dbdc28f499f619d44-1
removed -1 which may not be part of the address:
wget http://mmsc2.get.bell.ca/cloudmmsc?l=f95c4f5dbdc28f499f619d44

But since this is several days old it may have been "cleaned out" by your carrier. So if you get "not found" on both of those try again to receive a MMS photo, putting together the new http address from nuntium.log like I did above, and then try it with wget.

Yes, this is quite a technical and fiddly process, but we may learn what character in that http address is causing nuntium to wipe out the address (leaving the Invalid URL: '' response). @StandUpMobile if you are willing you could try as well to see if there is any clue you can uncover that is causing this "Invalid URL" response.

Fizz

@rik
From numtium... this is a test picture that my wife messaged me- as before i get the notification but it can't download it.

2022/01/26 20:44:16 Received ReceiveNotification() method call from 44600
2022/01/26 20:44:16 Push data
00000000  00 06 29 1f 22 61 70 70  6c 69 63 61 74 69 6f 6e  |..)."application|
00000010  2f 76 6e 64 2e 77 61 70  2e 6d 6d 73 2d 6d 65 73  |/vnd.wap.mms-mes|
00000020  73 61 67 65 00 81 84 af  84 8d 01 00 8c 82 98 36  |sage...........6|
00000030  32 37 66 34 39 39 35 61  34 66 30 36 39 38 61 63  |27f4995a4f0698ac|
00000040  30 35 66 36 30 35 31 2d  31 00 8d 92 89 1a 80 18  |05f6051-1.......|
00000050  ea 2b 31 35 31 39 38 35  39 30 35 34 37 2f 54 59  |.+15198590547/TY|
00000060  50 45 3d 50 4c 4d 4e 00  96 00 8a 80 88 05 81 03  |PE=PLMN.........|
00000070  09 3a 7f 86 81 83 68 74  74 70 3a 2f 2f 6d 6d 73  |.:....http://mms|
00000080  63 32 2e 67 65 74 2e 62  65 6c 6c 2e 63 61 2f 63  |c2.get.bell.ca/c|
00000090  6c 6f 75 64 6d 6d 73 63  3f 6c 3d 36 32 37 66 34  |loudmmsc?l=627f4|
000000a0  39 39 35 61 34 66 30 36  39 38 61 63 30 35 66 36  |995a4f0698ac05f6|
000000b0  30 35 31 2d 31 00 8e 03  04 b1 e8                 |051-1......|
2022/01/26 20:44:16 Trying to set Active property to true for context on true /ril_0/context2
2022/01/26 20:44:16 Download issues: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.InvalidArgs: Invalid URL: ''
2022/01/26 20:44:16 Trying to set Active property to false for context on false /ril_0/context2
2022/01/26 20:45:12 Received unknown method call on org.ofono.mms.Message MarkRead
2022/01/26 20:45:12 Message /org/ofono/mms/302610917674682/d42593a258f304dfd1c4a1c2c5edda49 is not responded and not expired, not deleting.

And now working on the wget... stay tuned...

OK i was able to download the first one (with the "-1"). When i open it up in Seabass, there is nothing... it appears like a blank file. Though the file browser says it's 280 kb in size, and seems to think it's a movie (based on the icon). So not sure how to look at this.

I also tried downloading the second (no "-1") but i get a 404 not found error.

Oh, and i double-checked that wifi is totally disabled.

rik

@fizz said in MMS success and failure:

OK i was able to download the first one (with the "-1"). When i open it up in Seabass, there is nothing... it appears like a blank file. Though the file browser says it's 280 kb in size, and seems to think it's a movie (based on the icon). So not sure how to look at this.

I wonder if something in the address is an invalid character or something? Could you try this:

wget -O mms-download.txt <html address> (I just edited: I think you need -O BEFORE the url)

Then you should find mms-download.txt in your home directory. If seabass still shows it empty, can you try in the terminal to view it?

cat mms-download.txt

??

Fizz

@rik
So downloading it to a .txt file allows me to see it. However, it is a huge file (2380 lines), and most of it filled with a pile of non-standard characters: diamonds, arabic (i think), cyrillic, diamonds, greek, etc etc. Basically, it looks encoded, and the majority of it is unreadable. It looks the same both in Seabass and through cat. I'm not sure it would even be postable in this forum. I can try if you think it's ok, but just giving fair warning.

Also to clarify, (because i misread your post about using wget), I have never successfully downloaded an mms message on this device. I can send fine, but have never successfully received an mms.

rik

@fizz said in MMS success and failure:

@rik
So downloading it to a .txt file allows me to see it. However, it is a huge file (2380 lines), and most of it filled with a pile of non-standard characters: diamonds, arabic (i think), cyrillic, diamonds, greek, etc etc. Basically, it looks encoded, and the majority of it is unreadable. It looks the same both in Seabass and through cat. I'm not sure it would even be postable in this forum. I can try if you think it's ok, but just giving fair warning.

Also to clarify, (because i misread your post about using wget), I have never successfully downloaded an mms message on this device. I can send fine, but have never successfully received an mms.

The best guess I have is that the carrier is encrypting the messages, sorry I don't know how this works but it must be. The first few lines should list readable phone numbers, you can view just those first lines with head filename.txt

Fizz

@rik
Unfortunately, viewing the head doesn't help. Most of it is those encoded characters, but there are a few html-like tags. The only obvious phone numbers, which are buried inside of the encoding, are both my own number (the number on this phone). I do see an image tag with filename, suggesting this was the image that was sent to me.

jezek

@fizz hmm, when you have the file downloaded, you can exploit that nuntium can now recover from errors at startup.

For each (failed) message there is a .db file in storage in ~/.local/share/nuntium/store/ directory in format <UUID>.db. The file is in json format.

Copy the downloaded file into the "storage" directory named as <UUID>.mms (replace the <UUID> with actual UUID). After this, you have to change the status of message to "downloaded" by editing the ~~.id~~.db file. Then after restarting the phone (or just nuntium with initctl --user restart nuntium command) the message should be decoded and sent to messaging-app.

jezek

@rik If downloading the failed message is possible via wget command, maybe somebody should try to write an workaround into nuntium download function and try the wget approach if current download method via ubuntu-download-manager fails, until the udm is fixed.

Fizz

@jezek said in MMS success and failure:

@fizz hmm, when you have the file downloaded, you can exploit that nuntium can now recover from errors at startup.

For each (failed) message there is a .db file in storage in ~/.local/share/nuntium/store/ directory in format <UUID>.db. The file is in json format.

Copy the downloaded file into the "storage" directory named as <UUID>.mms (replace the <UUID> with actual UUID). After this, you have to change the status of message to "downloaded" by editing the .id file. Then after restarting the phone (or just nuntium with initctl --user restart nuntium command) the message should be decoded and sent to messaging-app.

Sorry for my delayed reply. I finally tried this. Unfortunately it still hasn't given me the message. It does behave differently though. Here's what i did:

I had an MMS (an image) sent to my mobile. I get the usual notification that the message could not be retrieved. When i press the "download" button, it tries for a couple seconds and stops, keeping the same error message.

I then followed your instructions above- found the .db file, changed the status to 'downloaded', and then restarted the mobile.

The results: when i re-opened the messenger, i still see the warning. I tried the 'download' button again, but now it just spins constantly, as though it's trying to download but never succeeds. It stopped trying after only a couple seconds before, but now it seemingly never stops- been going for a half-hour now.

-Fizz

jezek

@fizz Oh sorry I forgot, in the <UUID>.db file, in which you modified the status to "downloaded", you have to set the TelepathyErrorNotified field to "false".

Then on the next nuntium restart, it loads the <UUID>.db file, finds out that the file is downloaded (in the <UUID>.mms file), but some error happened (cause the message was stuck in "downloaded" state) and telepathy was not notified of the error. So it will try to send the message to the messaging-app again.

I hope it works. I currently am working on some fixes which should prevent the endless rotating pending circle. It's basicaly done, I'm just cleaning the code and beautifying the commits. I'll write when the PR(s) is(are) ready.

Fizz

@jezek said in MMS success and failure:

@fizz Oh sorry I forgot, in the <UUID>.db file, in which you modified the status to "downloaded", you have to set the TelepathyErrorNotified field to "false".

Then on the next nuntium restart, it loads the <UUID>.db file, finds out that the file is downloaded (in the <UUID>.mms file), but some error happened (cause the message was stuck in "downloaded" state) and telepathy was not notified of the error. So it will try to send the message to the messaging-app again.

I hope it works. I currently am working on some fixes which should prevent the endless rotating pending circle. It's basicaly done, I'm just cleaning the code and beautifying the commits. I'll write when the PR(s) is(are) ready.

OK, i gave this a try. I had a fresh message with an image attached sent to me. I got the usual MMS error warning as usual. I found the .db file and changed the State (note it doesn't have a field named "Status") to "downloaded" and TelepathyErroyNotified to false. I then restarted the entire phone.

And... same thing as before. When i go back to the message and hig Download, it just keeps spinning non-stop, and i never get the image.

Also, even after another reboot of the phone, the button is still spinning.

-Fizz

jezek

@fizz said in MMS success and failure:

OK, i gave this a try. I had a fresh message with an image attached sent to me. I got the usual MMS error warning as usual. I found the .db file and changed the State (note it doesn't have a field named "Status") to "downloaded" and TelepathyErroyNotified to false. I then restarted the entire phone.

You forgot to copy the file downloaded with wget into the storage folder named as <UUID>.mms (replace the <UUID> with the actual UUID, as in the .db file name).

Fizz

@jezek said in MMS success and failure:

You forgot to copy the file downloaded with wget into the storage folder named as <UUID>.mms (replace the <UUID> with the actual UUID, as in the .db file name).

Where is the <uuid>.mms folder located? I haven't found any folders named that way. Is it supposed to be in the same place as the <uuid>.db files? If so, should i create the folder manually?

And should the downloaded file be named in any particular way, name or extension or otherwise?

-Fizz

jezek

@fizz said in MMS success and failure:

Where is the <uuid>.mms folder located? I haven't found any folders named that way. Is it supposed to be in the same place as the <uuid>.db files? If so, should i create the folder manually?

As i wrote before, the storage is in ~/.local/share/nuntium/store/. So yes, it is supposed to be in the same place as the <UUID>.db file.

And should the downloaded file be named in any particular way, name or extension or otherwise?

The downloaded file should have the same name as the .db file, but different extension (.mms).
Example: There is a file

~/.local/share/nuntium/store $ ls                                                                                                                                          
00947a75dd5c33ff406f296bd5330caa.db

So after copying and renaming you should have

~/.local/share/nuntium/store $ ls                                                                                                                                          
00947a75dd5c33ff406f296bd5330caa.db
00947a75dd5c33ff406f296bd5330caa.mms

Fizz

@jezek said in MMS success and failure:

As i wrote before, the storage is in ~/.local/share/nuntium/store/. So yes, it is supposed to be in the same place as the <UUID>.db file.

Oh, when you said "... into the storage folder named as <uuid>.mms" i thought you meant <uuid>.mms was the name of the folder. OK, i see now.

So, i had a fresh test message sent to me, which created a file in nuntium/store of 873cbe.db (shortened for posting, it's not actually that short). I changed the .db file to have "State":"downloaded" and "TelepathyErrorNotified":false . I used wget to download the message, renamed it to match the .db file (so it's 873cbd.mms) and moved it into the nuntium/store directory.

All of this is quite the pain on a little phone... ugh. Anyways, the result... same as before... it's just spinning after i tell it to download.

-Fizz