~amindfv/janky-mms-issues#7: 
Not sure if it's actually unclogging my phone

I'm using a Librem 5 with Purism's AweSIM. I basically need to know if jmms is working or if I need more help. Here is my problem (copied from my Purism forum thread).:

I’ve been using jmms --poll 60 since the evening of the 6th. I’ve gotten no messages through Chats or jmms until now. I have sent two texts, which I now know my friends have received. My sent messages resulted in jmms saying ‘1 messages in “sent” state’. This “sent state” lasted for a couple hours for the first one and about 16 hours for the second. I don’t know if this means my sent texts are being delayed.

I just now received 13 texts all at once, including the confirmation codes from 2 days ago. They appeared in Chats but not jmms, so I’m sure they’re all SMS. This may mean that jmms is not unclogging the modem like it’s supposed to. On the other hand, maybe it will work in the future now that I’m up to date on my SMSes (pure speculation). I’ve asked one of my friends to send me a group text to see if I get it.

Status
REPORTED
Submitter
~luther
Assigned to
No-one
Submitted
3 years ago
Updated
3 years ago
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No labels applied.

~amindfv 3 years ago

I've twice experienced a large number of sent messages keeping messages clogged (in fact, I just created ticket #8 to document the issue), but I have never seen one message making things clogged.

I'd say that once you get a big dump of SMS messages, that indicates your queue is now unclogged. Those messages were in a backlog and now something's been removed,

A few questions:

  • Did you receive your friend's group message?
  • If someone sends you an SMS do you get it now?
  • If you jmms --read do you see any MMS messages?

One other thing to note: I've observed that sometimes after jmms unclogs the modem, it takes a little while for the new SMS messages to come in (maybe 10 minutes?). Then sometimes you get multiple messages all at once. I've also had a restart of the phone cause the SMS to finally come in all at once.

~amindfv 3 years ago

One other note: seeing 1 messages in “sent” state is totally normal. I don't know why the notification sometimes stays for a long time, but it doesn't mean your SMS hasn't been sent.

~luther 3 years ago

I'd say that once you get a big dump of SMS messages, that indicates your queue is now unclogged. Those messages were in a backlog and now something's been removed,

In the past couple of weeks I've had two cases of receiving two texts at the same time, so I can't be sure yet that this SMS dump has anything to do with jmms.

Did you receive your friend's group message?

No.

If someone sends you an SMS do you get it now?

I don't think so. My friends haven't replied to me from earlier today.

If you jmms --read do you see any MMS messages?

No. It says "Up to date!" as always.

I just rebooted my phone, and it did get rid of the '2 messages in "sent" state' that was there since I texted my friends about 10 hours ago.

~amindfv 3 years ago

In general, if you get SMS messages it means you've unclogged anything that came before (or that clogging wasn't an issue in the first place, and there was some other problem).

I wonder if it's possible there are MMS messages in the queue after the SMS messages you've received. Are you still running jmms --poll? What's the output of your --poll command, or of jmms --get?

Is the ~/msg-data/mms directory empty? It's very strange to me that people have sent you MMS messages but there seems to be no trace of them. Usually the problem with a clogged modem is that you can see them (e.g. with mmcli) but they're not actually removed. You might have the opposite problem: they're not listed at all...

~luther 3 years ago

Today, I've been running jmms --poll 30. The output of --poll and --get is "No new messages received". ~/msg-data/mms is empty.

~amindfv 3 years ago

~luther any chance you ran these instructions or similar?: https://wiki.mobian-project.org/doku.php?id=mms

Another user who's having a similar issue to yours ran those instructions before using jmms. It's possible that configuration conflicts with jmms.

~luther 3 years ago

No, I don't remember doing anything like that.

~amindfv 3 years ago

~luther is this resolved?

~luther 3 years ago

I can't really confirm anything, because I don't know that anyone has sent me an MMS. I asked my friends to stop sending me group texts. I've been running jmms --poll 60 almost all the time, and it hasn't picked up anything. I don't think I've had any significant problems with SMS.

~luther 3 years ago

New development here. When running jmms --get, I get:

2 messages in "received" state - fetching...
Attempting to get message numbers: ["5","4"]
(ExitFailure 1,"","error: couldn't create file: SMS has no data\n")
(ExitFailure 1,"","error: couldn't create file: SMS has no data\n")
On branch master

Initial commit

nothing to commit
Notifying: "jmms: unable to save: ExitFailure 1"
/bin/sh: 1: aplay: not found
("","")
attempted to get: ["5","4"]
successes: []
Notifying: "jmms: 2 messages not received"
/bin/sh: 1: aplay: not found
("","")

Running jmms --read gives me Up to date!.

My wild guess is that jmms is using git to save information, but it never never ran git init in whatever directory it's trying to use.

While writing this message, I received 2 SMSes. jmms is back to saying that there's no new messages.

~luther 3 years ago

Another update: Someone just told me that they sent me a group text. jmms never saw it.

~amindfv 3 years ago

jmms runs git init if needed automatically on startup (https://git.sr.ht/~amindfv/jmms/tree/master/item/jmms.hs#L68-73).

Anecdotally, I've occasionally seen "couldn't create file: SMS has no data" errors, and I think - but am far from sure - that jmms has seen SMS messages before they were picked up by Chatty, but by the time it tried to fetch them they were gone.

The way jmms works is fairly simple:

  1. An MMS message is recieved via SMS (the process basically starts as an SMS containing a URL to fetch the MMS)
  2. jmms then looks for any received SMS messages with mmcli --messaging-list-sms
  3. jmms then downloads them, parses them, etc

This works on the theory that all SMS messages in the received state contain MMS URLs, since if they weren't MMS, Chatty would have fetched them then deleted the receipt such that they'd no longer appear in mmcli --messaging-list-sms.

However, there's a possible race condition:

  1. A message comes in
  2. jmms sees the message with mmcli --messaging-list-sms
  3. Chatty sees the message, fetches it and deletes it
  4. jmms, assuming the thing it saw was was an MMS, attempts to read the message, but it's now empty.

This is my running theory on why I occasionally see "couldn't create file: SMS has no data" messages. However, that should only occur once. If, for example, you ran jmms --get twice in a row and both times saw that error, my theory of the cause is incorrect.

~amindfv 3 years ago

Re: the message you expected to see today, can you post the output of jmms --get and mmcli --messaging-list-sms?

~amindfv 3 years ago

A couple other questions:

  • What OS are you running? Mobian? Something else?
  • Do you still receive normal SMS? Is Chatty your client?

~luther 3 years ago

That race condition does seem to explain the long error message I posted before. I did get that error multiple times, but it seems to me that that should still be possible if Chatty was having its own hiccups, unless I'm missing something.

$ jmms --get

4 messages in "sent" state
No new messages recieved
$ mmcli --messaging-list-sms -m0
error: no actions specified

Don't know what the problem is there. Certainly, --messaging-list-sms is an action.

I'm running PureOS. The app window is called "Chats". I assume that's the generic name of "Chatty". GNOME has the annoying habit of only showing the generic instead of real names of its apps. I'm still getting SMS normally. I've received a few today.

~amindfv 3 years ago

I'm still getting SMS normally. I've received a few today.

That's great news and it's the most important sign the phone's unclogged. Can you confirm you've gotten MMS messages, i.e. with jmms --read you've looked at a group or multimedia message?

~luther 3 years ago

I've never been able to see any MMSes with jmms. The latest news suggests that Chatty is processing MMSes, but has no way to tell the user about them, making it impossible for jmms to ever see them. A few weeks ago, I flashed my phone with PureOS Byzantium and stopped using jmms. I've been watching this page for news, but I'm sure that information only applies to the development version of Chatty, and that the official version isn't so up to date.

~amindfv 3 years ago

I see, thanks for the update. If you want, I can see what it'd take for jmms to support reading files that Chatty has downloaded and discarded.

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