plasma-dialer doesn't call

[Ant]

Received my "PINEPHONE - Beta Edition with Convergence Package Linux SmartPhone" today. Lucky me  (or not?)

Vanilla manjaro shown T-Mobile with my SIM card, as expected, because I took it from my old phone and many people report that this trick works just fine, for example here. Unfortunately OS was so glitchy, that I didn't try to make a call and updated it as soon is it got some battery charge. Had no issues with update and newer version looks better:

uname says plasma-mobile 5.16.11.1-manjaro-arm
plasmashell --version says 5.24.2
cat /etc/lsb-release says manjaro 22.01 (funny, but I don't see it here)

All privacy pins are in upper position, ON.

At this point, if I go to Settings > Cellular Networks > SIM Cards, I do see my SIM 0, and it show IMEI, T-Mobile. Modem details detects my phone number and says enabled: true, state: disabled, registration state: unknown registration status, firmware version is missing - that i don't understand and it looks confusing. next it says interface cdc-wdm0 and then detailed info looks good.
for some reason folder "/var/lib/ofono/" contains two folders with my IMEI (second one has "-3" suffix) that is strange.
Also running something like "ofonoctl list" gives an error "could not aquire org.ofono.Manager on dbus"... with a typo in "acquire"...

Finally if I do a call at plasma-dialer (the "Phone" app) it instantly slides "Dialer" screen (or tab whatever) to an "Active call list" screen, that is blank. If I repeat that several times quickly - sometimes I see that something blinks, like it's trying to call, but that disappears immediately. Tried with and without data on. 

T-Mobile requires VoLTE, so I checked that:

Code:

atinout - /dev/EG25.AT out.txt << EOF
AT+CLCC
EOF

gives:
+CLCC: 1,1,0,1,0,"",128
+CLCC: 2,1,0,1,0,"",128
that is exactly as described here 1 in 4th position in both lines means VoLTE on.

So please help me troubleshoot this:

- first of all, what about that ofono thing? is it deprecated or still used, if used - how to make it work?

- where can I find logs of plasma-dialer ?

- can I run Dialer or other application from command line to make a call and see error output?
I know that

Code:

xdg-open tel://1234567890

does work on Librem5, but in my case it doesn't call and doesn't give any output to console... is there anything else in manjaro?

- ...any better suggestion/ideas why it's not calling?

[acrux]

If the preinstalled version was older than beta 9, then it was based on ofono. So if you upgraded it to the latest, then it was replaced with modemmanager.
There could be leftover ofono files, but they should not be in use.
I'd suggest to flash latest - beta11 to a SD card and do a fresh start. Or test any other OS. If you are satisfied, install it to a internal memory.

[dcinoz]

If the preinstalled version was older than beta 9, then it was based on ofono. So if you upgraded it to the latest, then it was replaced with modemmanager.
There could be leftover ofono files, but they should not be in use.
I'd suggest to flash latest - beta11 to a SD card and do a fresh start. Or test any other OS. If you are satisfied, install it to a internal memory.

I tried the latest dev image Manjaro-ARM-plasma-mobile-dev-pinephone-20220304 and even with data on (otherwise turns off modem), I was unable to make calls or send text messages, I don't believe the telephony stack works properly with ModemManager yet. The modem was on and responded to AT commands via mmcli.

Make sure modem is on with:
mmcli -m any -e
check eg with
mmcli -m any --messaging-list-sms
mmcli -m any --command='AT+QCFG="ims"'

I downgraded to the stable branch and had the same problems.

I booted back to Mobian on SD card and everything works for me, though I think there are still some missed calls / SMS notifications when in suspend mode. This is with the latest Quectel firmware, I haven't tried with Biktorgj one.

I'm on a non-VoLTE MVNO.

Hopefully it gets fixed eventually, annoying the when the phone part doesn't work (reliably).

[israel]

I have been able to use the Plasma dialer successfully for calls, SMS and MMS, though for MMS I need to disable the WiFi.
Though I have been using an older image and updating it frequently.
systemctl tells me ModemManager is `active(running)` and ofono is `inactive(dead)`

The only issue I have is the configuration of audio.  If `Settings->Audio->Playback Devices->Port` is set to `Internal earpiece` the phone speaker will not ring, and if set to `Internal speaker` the phone cannot be moved out of speaker phone mode.  This is inconvenient, but certainly to be anticipated with software not meant for average users.

I think the best advice is indeed to ensure you are using an up-to-date version either via pacman or re-flashing a newer image.

[Ant]

Sorry for a delay, didn't have time to play with it.

@acrux yes, I checked the log
sudo journalctl -b | grep 'modemmanager\|eg25-manager\|modem'
and I see that it hooks to ModemManager and ofono is missing, so you are right, probably it came with vanilla phone, but later was removed from system.

Thanks @dcinoz, you are right, log said that modem is inactive, and turning it on manually with
mmcli -m 0 -e
enables calls with plasma-dialer! I was confused by misleading "disable" button at modem settings screen, because it is clickable and makes impression, like modem is on, but it's not... and enabling doesn't work from that screen. The problem now is that it's doesn't turn modem on automatically after phone restart, so I need to do it manually every time. I tried to put that mmcli command to .bashrc and .bash-profile but that seem to be failing, I'll try to figure out later why specifically.

Another problem that I had is that person on another end can hear me, but I couldn't here them... thanks @israel for the hint, I configured audio device and now everything works. Plus today I've got an update of alsa and plasma-dialer that solved the bug with empty "Active call list" screen.

So bottom line - it works now, that is awesome, except I don't know how to automatically enable modem... I believe there should be some deamon that properly starts it instead of my clunky bash startup scripts? Any hints on that?

[israel]

@Ant You might download a new image, put it on an SD card and see if it now "just works".  I had to reinstall from the original version installed on the phone a while back.  The thing to remember about this is that things are still very much in the Beta phase, and a fresh install can clean up some random configuration file you had.

There may be a way to set things up using systemctl, though if you **need** to keep the current installation, though I do not know specifically.

[Ant]

@israel Well, reinstalling Linux in every uncertain situation usually does the trick, but I want to play with it before flashing OS

So back to my question - I just added that command to Settings->Autostart and modem now starts after phone restart. It takes a minute for it to fully register with cell network though... Unfortunately there is only ADD button, and there is no way to edit or remove what you add... that is lame, but I'm fine, it does what I want, problem solved.

Last question - do you guys hear phone beeps while you waiting for opponent to answer your call? For me phone is just silently waiting till they pick up. I can survive with that of cause, but that is not how phones usually work, so I'm just curious, if it's my personal issue.

[israel]

@israel Well, reinstalling Linux in every uncertain situation usually does the trick, but I want to play with it before flashing OS

So back to my question - I just added that command to Settings->Autostart and modem now starts after phone restart. It takes a minute for it to fully register with cell network though... Unfortunately there is only ADD button, and there is no way to edit or remove what you add... that is lame, but I'm fine, it does what I want, problem solved.

Last question - do you guys hear phone beeps while you waiting for opponent to answer your call? For me phone is just silently waiting till they pick up. I can survive with that of cause, but that is not how phones usually work, so I'm just curious, if it's my personal issue.

Yeah I hear phone beeps.
Sorry to take so long to reply  

You could also flash an SD card with the current version, and compare things from there.