not receiving and, receiving duplicates

[Paul Van Breemen]

Hi Guys,

I have two issues

1. My SIM will suddenly stop receiving messages!

2. FLSMS processes all received messages twice!

 

Issue 1. My SIM will suddenly stop receiving messages!

• The first thing I do is remove and replace the Modem, then restart FLSMS.
• This works 3 out of 5 times.
• The next and last thing I do is remove the SIM, write a letter to our finance department to release funds for a replacement SIM, write a letter to the Telecom service provider director requesting a replacement SIM, find my director and request that they sign the letter, receive the money for the replacement SIM, walk to the Telecom office and stand in a queue awaiting to start the actual process of replacing the SIM.

This is a long standing issue about which I have contacted you earlier.

The last advice from you was to install version 1.7.0-beta-10.

Version 1.7.0-beta-10 was installed on 25 June 2012. It is now 4 July 2012 and I am replacing the SIM for the second time since upgrading.

Issue 2. FLSMS processes all received messages twice!

Although I have only become aware of this issue today I have tracked it back in the messages table to 25 june 2012 which coincides with the upgrade to ver 1.7.

In an attempt to workaround the SIM issues I have implemented a standard keyword process. A colleague sends an SMS every morning and when he receives the standard reply we can be sure that the system is both receiving and sending messages.

When I was informed of the SIM issues today I also realised that my colleague had been receiving duplicate replies also since the upgrade.

It appears that not only does FLSMS process the received messages twice but also sends the relpies twice. This has the potential to raise our costs by at least 30% as every message received will generate two reponses.

 

What I have noticed is that all the incomming messages generate some sort of error and are queued automatically for reprocessing.

 

[Incoming message processor] TRACE [04/07/12 10:07:38] net.frontlinesms.messaging.IncomingMessageProcessor.run(IncomingMessageProcessor.java:124) - Getting incoming message from queue.
[Incoming message processor] TRACE [04/07/12 10:07:38] net.frontlinesms.messaging.IncomingMessageProcessor.processIncomingMessageDetails(IncomingMessageProcessor.java:166) - Got message from queue: 18099993:20347192
[Incoming message processor] DEBUG [04/07/12 10:07:38] net.frontlinesms.messaging.IncomingMessageProcessor.processIncomingMessageDetails(IncomingMessageProcessor.java:171) - Sender [+##########]
[Incoming message processor] WARN  [04/07/12 10:07:38] net.frontlinesms.messaging.IncomingMessageProcessor.run(IncomingMessageProcessor.java:146) - Error processing message.  It will be queued for re-processing.

 

As you can imagine we are desperate to find solutions to these two issues.

I have also sent my log files through to FrontlineSMS support team with this discussion as reference.

 

Kind Regards

Paul

[Laura Walker Hudson]

Hi Paul

Thanks so much for reporting this. I'm sorry to hear that the v1.7 beta has not resolved your issue. A number of other users reported similar problems in countries where similar network changes had taken place, and we had hoped that the changes we made in the beta would resolve it. Obviously there is further work to do here - but please be assured we don't take lightly the administrative cost to you in terms of time and resources of replacing the SIM card. We will look into this for you as fast as we can. To aid us in this, it would be very helpful if you could send us expanded logs following the method detailed here.

In the meantime, your report of duplicated entries is very interesting and useful as we had encountered that with our :Learn beta and are now questioning whether it's a v1.7 error rather than relating specifically to :Learn.

Again I have asked our developers to look into this and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

Best wishes

Laura

[Paul Van Breemen]

Hi Laura,

I have resent the logs after switching logging level from ERROR to ALL, and sending a test message.

Please advise

 

Cheers

Paul

[Roy Owino]

Hi Paul,

One of reasons that might cause your modem to suddenly stop receiving message could be that the incoming messages are not being deleted from the sim card as they are received. You need to manually delete them to avoid replacing sim cards every now and then. FrontlineSMS should be able to do this automatically for you depending on the settings you have chosen at the Preferences>Services>Device section.

To manually delete the messages form the sim card you'll have to use Hyperterminal to communicate directly to your modem.

After setting Hyperterm up, use these commands to interrogate your modem

1) AT+CPMS=?

the response should be.. +CPMS: ("ME","SM","MT"),("ME","SM","MT"),("SM","MT")

2) AT+CPMS="SM"

This will list the sim memory usage, the response should be.. +CPMS: 20,0,20,0,20,0 if the sim memory is empty

To list all the messages in the sim memory use:

3)AT+CMGL="ALL"

To read message in position one use: 

4)AT+CMGR=1 

To delete the message in position one use: 
AT+CMGD=1 

Repeat this process to delete messages in different positions from 1 to 20 assuming the sim memory is full.

Regarding receiving double messages, please make sure that two connections are not created out of one connected modem. You can go to the Connection tab and disconnect one of the connections.

Let me know how it goes,

Roy

[Paul Van Breemen]

Hi Roy,

Thanks for your input.

Unfortunatly this is a long standing issue.

• FrontlineSMS 1.7  on a Windows 2008 Sever
• Samba 75 GSM modem
• SIM card is Not pin protected
• SIM is post paid and messages are NOT saved to memory
• Phone is not duplicated within FLSMS

If the SIM is placed into another device it will immediately start receiving queued messages. This is one of the problems with replacing the SIM as each new SIM is PIN protected. In the time it takes to activate the SIM and remove the PIN request it receives the queued messages.

[Roy Owino]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your patience. We're currently looking into this issue and we'll soon get back to you with a solution.

Thanks,

Roy

[Paul Van Breemen]

Hi Laura,
Do you have any update on these two issues!!!!
This is becoming more and more urgent!!!
Paul

[Alex Anderson]

Hi Paul,

SIM will suddenly stop receiving messages

It looks from your logs that the cause of this issue is poor handling of delivery reports by FrontlineSMS.  You can prevent FrontlineSMS from requesting delivery reports through the phone config in the Connections tab (double click on the "connected device" and you should see the settings there).  You may need to clear old delivery reports from the SIM by putting it in another device as you've done previously.

FLSMS processes all received messages twice!
For this I can see no obvious cause in the logs, although it may be affected by the previous issue.  Are duplicate messages sent consistently, or only sometimes?  Are there clear cases (e.g. particular message, particular recipients) when these occur?  It might help if you can provide both a log and specific details of a message which was duplicated - the last log I have from you only has a couple of messages sent.

Alex