(yet another) MMS issue (France)

Hardware Librem 5
1

Hello all,

My librem5 was working fine, so fine. I decided to change my carrier to another save money. and it was the start of my troubles. Here’s the story :
I have an old Orange SIM card (I live in France) with my personnal number that I use for my Librem5 as a daily driver.
I have another Orange SIM card (but with a recent contract) for my backup Android phone (for quality photos, bank MFA applications, emergency requests etc)

I recently decided to change my old Orange contract to another operator (Bouygues) to save money. And starting the moment I change the SIM card on the Librem5 I no longer could send MMS.
I’d well applied Bouygues APN parameters but I couldn’t make it work.
so to maintain the possibility to send/receive MMS while I find a solution to fix it on the Librem5, I’ve switch the SIM card from my backup Android phone. So now the Librem5 has a recent Orange SIM card (and use my Android as a dailydriver :pensive: ) I’ve configured the Orange APN parameters and etc but I still can’t send MMS … (for info, I suppose that there is a different implementation between the two Orange SIM cards : on the old SIM card I could ping 9.9.9.9 and get my IP routing table, on the new one I can’t but I still can access to the internet)

So I’ve check differents tips available on the forum :

https://forums.puri.sm/t/how-to-remove-mms/20251/2

https://forums.puri.sm/t/apn-settings-values-and-storage/20157/20

the last link is a good track :

purism@librem5:~$ sudo journalctl -b -0 | grep 'APN'
avril 10 21:55:59 librem5 mmsdtng[806]: ../plugins/modemmanager.c:set_context() Current Context APN: Orange, mmsd-tng settings MMS APN: orange.acte
avril 10 21:55:59 librem5 mmsdtng[806]: ../plugins/modemmanager.c:set_context() **The modem is not connected to the correct APN!**
avril 10 21:55:59 librem5 mmsdtng[806]: ../plugins/modemmanager.c:bearer_handler() Set MMSC: http://mms.orange.fr, Set Proxy: 192.168.10.200, Set MMS APN: orange.acte
avril 10 21:55:59 librem5 chatty[1245]: Bearer Handler emitted an error, the APN set in mmsd's settings does not match any connected APNs

so the error seems to come from an APN misconfiguration but the thing is… the parameters are good :

purism@librem5:~$ cat ~/.mms/modemmanager/mms
[Modem Manager]
CarrierMMSC=http://mms.orange.fr
MMS_APN=orange.acte
CarrierMMSProxy=192.168.10.200
DefaultModemNumber=NULL
AutoProcessOnConnection=true
AutoProcessSMSWAP=true
IMSI=2080xxxxxxxxxxx

[Settings]
UseDeliveryReports=false
TotalMaxAttachmentSize=1100000
MaxAttachments=25
AutoCreateSMIL=true
ForceCAres=true

here’s Orange APN parameters :
Orange APN

I’ve checked the APN parameters when the Orange SIM card is inserted in the Android
I’ve tried the following actions too

systemctl --user stop mmsd-tng
rm ~/.mms/modemmanager/*
systemctl --user start mmsd-tng

reconfigure the APN parameters

purism@librem5:~$ sudo mmcli -m any --messaging-list-sms
No sms messages were found

indeed i’ve rebooted several times during the different tests.

in the begining I could receive MMS, now it’s even worse: after all these tests, I can neither receive nor send mms from the Librem5 :sob:
(I think I shouldn’t have removed the files located in ~/mms/modemmanager…)

any ideas ?

1 Like
2

It sometimes comes down to the way the carrier handles the traffic; you can experience different results from different carriers given a functionally equivalent configuration on the L5.

I use Purism’s AweSIM Simple plan for personal use; MMS previously worked okay with some reliability issues (mostly from certain users with iPhones - there’s a lot in this forum about messages getting hung up on the modem) but MMS appears completely broken for me with the new AweSIM carrier (AT&T backhaul network). So my point is that similar issues affect users on other cell modem bands and carriers, and any progress/insight we can discover here could improve the experience for likely over a thousand customers - either by discovering a nuance in the modem or providing useful feedback for the carriers to fix.

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3

Maybe forum search for “Bouygues”.

Did you ask that provider what the correct MMS settings are? And post them here or post a link to their page that documents that?

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4

I had a similar issue and the solution was to change this parameter :

TotalMaxAttachmentSize=600000

as explained in this thread MMS’s TotalMaxAttachmentSize and French mobile phone operators

2 Likes
5

Hi
Thank you for your answers.

I’ve modified the max amount of data per MMS, but unfortunately it doesn’t fix the problem.

Is there some other config files that ‘mms’ that should located in
~/.mms/modemmanager/ ?
On my Librem5, i only find the mms config file and a lot of files that, i guess, are unsent mms messages.

1 Like
6

You need to connect to that same apn trough system settings also.
It seems that you have separate apn for mms and data and at the moment networkamanager can handle only one at the time.

Here is one workaround Alaraajavamma / apn switcher for mms · GitLab
But you can also just change the apn manually every time you wan’t to send mms (but if you receive lot of mms messages then it might be wise to use something like my script)

2 Likes
7

There are also settings for mms in Calls preferences

1 Like