Does any os support mms?

[RandomN00B]

Hello!

I'm going to try using my pinephone as a daily driver. As of right now, does any os support mms? That's pretty important for me to communicate with.

[0x070]

Any MMS progress?

[kop316]

My current understanding is that no Pinephone Distribution has functional MMS.

https://sr.ht/~anteater/mms-stack/

Ubuntu Touch uses ofono, and from what I see MMS works on the Nexus 5. However, their community page has MMS as non-functional: https://gitlab.com/ubports/community-ports/pinephone . They however seem to be the closest to having it work.

Any distribution that uses phosh (Mobian, PostmarketOS with Phosh, etc.) depends on Chatty (which doesn't have MMS support https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/chatty/-/issues/30 ) which in turn uses Modem Manager, which also has no MMS support ( https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mobile-br...issues/227 ).

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any work on this at all (and very few distros seem to even awknowledge MMS at all). Personally, this is to me the biggest set back to making the Pinephone a daily driver, and I am not sure what would be the best way to start getting things happening for it. I would be more than happy to donate time or setting up a bounty to making this happen.

Are there any thoughts?

[kop316]

So I found this website, and it has a lot of info about MMS:

https://www.nowsms.com/doc
https://www.nowsms.com/doc/mmsc-messagin...-mms-works

It seems that primary communication between the phone and operator is a protocol called "mm1", and communicates with an MMSC server.
https://www.nowsms.com/doc/submitting-mms-messages/mm1

Additional Information can be found here:
http://openmobilealliance.org/release/MMS/

I can't find too much about the WAP protocol right now.

However, to create MMS files:
https://www.nowsms.com/doc/advanced-conf...sage-files

and to send:
https://www.nowsms.com/doc/submitting-mm...e-with-php

It looks like you need to send an SMS to let the other phone know to get it:
https://www.nowsms.com/doc/web-menu-inte...tification

T-Mobile's protocol is here:
https://www.t-mobile.com/support/devices...n-settings

MMSC: http://mms.msg.eng.t-mobile.com/mms/wapenc
MMS proxy: <Not set>
MMS port: <Not set>
MMS protocol: WAP 2.0

I hope this gives some place to start to working on MMS.

[kop316]

So I did a bit of invesitgating:

I have investigated it a bit more. Modem Manager can see the MMS notification with this command:
$mmcli -m 4 --messaging-list-sms

/org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SMS/13 (received)
/org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SMS/12 (receiving)
/org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SMS/11 (received)

I sent myself an MMS and redid the command
$mmcli -m 4 --messaging-list-sms
/org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SMS/14 (received)
/org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SMS/13 (received)
/org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SMS/12 (receiving)
/org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SMS/11 (received)

I additionally was able to download the SMS with this command:
$mmcli -m 4 -s 14 --create-file-with-data=/home/mobian/mms2.txt

You can also see it with this command:
mobian@mobian:~$ mmcli -m 2 -s 8
-----------------------
General | dbus path: /org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SMS/8
-----------------------
Content | number: 2300
| data: **kop316 deleted this data due to privacy concerns**
-----------------------
Properties | pdu type: deliver
| state: received
| storage: me
| smsc: +12063130079
| class: 1
| timestamp: 2020-08-17T19:51:03-07:00


It was the SMS notifcation! Between this and the fact that most of the other MMS handling is done though WAP/HTTP, I don't think Modem Manager needs to be modified in order to support MMS.

Even more exciting, I can download the MMS! I had to switch to mobile data, but once I did a simple "wget" downloaded the MMS payload.

[kop316]

I have been playing around with MMS all morning. Bottom line, I don't think Modem Manager needs any modifications to support MMS. I recommended closing the issue here: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mobile-br...issues/227

I also outlined my thoughts on how chatty can handle MMS here: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/chatty/-/issues/30
I think purple-mm-sms can handle the SMS notifications (to send and recieve) and needs to work with some sort of helper program (I called it purple-mms) in order to download/upload and decode/encode the MMS payload and work with chatty to display it.

I welcome other's thoughts on what would make the most sense, but I figured putting it upstream would make the most sense (so any changes would go everywhere). Hopefully it can also jump start getting MMS functional in chatty.

[antiX-Dave]

After playing around with it for a bit... I have been casually looking at the code for projects like
https://sourceforge.net/projects/mmsclient/files/
and
http://python-mms.sourceforge.net/
before testing the code already set forth by such projects.
My hopes are to sort out / grab some inspiration from the above projects. Then try and work out a starting point such as a "manual" script that is a little less "manual" than typing out every step.

As noted the sms notification for an mms is already available via modem manager. As a quick show, you can see the sms notifications via modem-manager(-gui) while chatty does not show them. From my poking around these sms notification messages are a "link" to mms data file on the mmsc server. While having the wifi off and using the mobile data as your internet connection you are able to connect to the mmsc server through the mms url/proxy settings via curl (and wget???). Using the string sent via the sms notification message to finish off the url. I was only able to get this to work once for me, and I did not work out how to decode the mms data file. There also seems to be an expiry time frame for the mms data file to remain on the mmsc server; As well, seemingly only one attempt to connect and download the file using the notification link from the sms message.

Just sharing my random poking around in case it is useful information for others to try as well. I am not likely to bring any level of completion to this and definitely not in a timely manner or respectable codeset compared to what is already taking place.

[SwordfishII]

So I did a bit of invesitgating:

I have investigated it a bit more. Modem Manager can see the MMS notification with this command:
$mmcli -m 4 --messaging-list-sms

/org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SMS/13 (received)
/org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SMS/12 (receiving)
/org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SMS/11 (received)

I sent myself an MMS and redid the command
$mmcli -m 4 --messaging-list-sms
/org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SMS/14 (received)
/org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SMS/13 (received)
/org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SMS/12 (receiving)
/org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SMS/11 (received)

I additionally was able to download the SMS with this command:
$mmcli -m 4 -s 14 --create-file-with-data=/home/mobian/mms2.txt

You can also see it with this command:
mobian@mobian:~$ mmcli -m 2 -s 8
  -----------------------
  General    | dbus path: /org/freedesktop/ModemManager1/SMS/8
  -----------------------
  Content    |    number: 2300
            |      data: **kop316 deleted this data due to privacy concerns**
  -----------------------
  Properties |  pdu type: deliver
            |    state: received
            |  storage: me
            |      smsc: +12063130079
            |    class: 1
            | timestamp: 2020-08-17T19:51:03-07:00


It was the SMS notifcation! Between this and the fact that most of the other MMS handling is done though WAP/HTTP, I don't think Modem Manager needs to be modified in order to support MMS.

Even more exciting, I can download the MMS! I had to switch to mobile data, but once I did a simple "wget" downloaded the MMS payload.

Almost seems like a background daemon querying for an mms sms in the background would work. Once it finds one it triggers a wget script.

Probably not the most power efficient way and bound to have issues with sleep, but functional.

[puffchumpy]

Seems there has been some recent development on MMS, see https://git.sr.ht/~anteater/vgmms

Ofono with patches is require. Distros that use modemmanager might out of luck in the short term.

[Cree]

Im curious, potentially quite ignorant, but with data do we even need mms? Even on my android for years myself and everyone i know have sent each other multimedia via apps like whatsapp and telegram. Since this has always worked over wifi and data, does mms still have a footing in modern phones?