SIM card removed issue with SailfishX

answered 2019-01-23 23:41:40 +0300

slowcyclist
621 ●8 ●12 ●13

I want to add that this does not require crossing borders or being in remote areas as other answers/comments report. It happens to me while staying whithin 3km of my home, 30 km away from Paris. Not really a region with poor cellular coverage! Sometimes the bugs occurs 4 times in a single day. And then it may not occur for 10 days in a row...

For those who are not affected by that issue let me also clarify that when the bug strikes, you have no way to know until you actually check your phone. You may have been offline for 5 minutes or 5 hours... Good luck explaining to your spouse/partner/boss that you were unreachable because of a bug in your phone's OS... Major usability issue!

Since I'm so frequently affected, I have offered to help debugging. I have spontaneously emailed ofono logs; I've tried to get attention in zendesk; I have received no answer whatsoever...

According to the original post it seems to be a regression introduced with Sailfish 2.1.4... That should not be so hard to check what was changed in the telephony stack (likely ofono). It has been 10 month since this has been reported and still not even an official statement about what Jolla has found, what needs to be done regarding fixing this bug...

At the top this issue is marked "Tracked by Jolla". Seriously? Come on Jolla! All we can see is the just the opposite. In the end I find this false statement really offensive. By the way, why not using a proper bug tracker facing the open world like everyone in FOSS? Something to hide, maybe? Like doing absolutely nothing on this issue?

In the end, sick and tired of this situation, I came up with a workaround for myself: I have a script watching for the SIM "getting lost" and when that occurs, it reboots the phone ("sudo reboot" -- Rebooting only the SIM card reader would be clearly better, but it is not documented how that can be done). That requires using my auto pin enter script to get back online automatically. That works, and the phone is offline only the time it takes to reboot... However, it is not a solution, it's a hack: It needs developper mode (for sudo), editing text files, setting up systemd services...

In conclusion my Xperia X F5122 running Sailfish OS is not intrinsically dependable for being reached. I think I have been very patient, quite supportive of Jolla and Sailfish (I own a Jolla 1 and I bought an an Xperia X license), but I am frustrated not seeing any solid and useful interaction with Jolla and not trusting Jolla is going to do what its users need and expect. I'm seriously considering moving to something else, trully and fully open.

answered 2019-07-23 11:34:30 +0300

jovirkku
23703 ●213 ●311 ●247

  moderator

updated 2019-08-09 09:46:22 +0300

Sailfish OS update 3.1.0 (available for early access subscribers now, and to all users in a couple of weeks) contains the following workaround for those who suffer from this SIM related issue and don't really need the SIM application toolkit (STK), i.e. services running in the SIM card provided by your cellular operator.

On 3.1.0 it is possible to disable the STK completely which hopefully eliminates those incorrect "SIM card removed" messages.

NOTE: The following requires that you have solid experience in using Linux commands and files. Otherwise your attempt might cause more problems than bring benefit. Do not try it if you feel unsure.

This can be tested in the following way - you will need the developer mode and a text editor for it:

devel-su
cd /etc/ofono
cp ril_subscription.conf original_ril_subscription.conf  ## save it, just in case...
vi ril_subscription.conf

Add the following line to section [Settings] :

enableSimToolkit=false

Save the file. Restart the device.

Please report if this help in your case or does not help.

NOTE: The SIM-based services will not run on your phone, now, until you remove the line you added to the .conf file.

answered 2018-09-16 18:00:52 +0300

vision
1191 ●10 ●18 ●20

Confirming the issue as well for both F5121 and F5122. Since the issue is known now for almost 6 months I am wondering whether Jolla has it on his list of bugs to be fixed ASAP!? If not... please do so ;).

My experience this week:

Travelling from Germany to Austria:

SIM card removed. You need to restart the device to activate the inserted SIM OK

One hour later… travelling from Austria to Slovakia:

SIM card removed . You need to restart the device to activate the inserted SIM OK

Expecting the same annoying behaviour this evening when travelling back. Since I have persuaded my wife to use SFOSX instead of Android I now have the discussion about the reliability of SailfishX on the Xperia X ;).

@Jolla: It's your turn now ;)

answered 2018-12-27 13:11:22 +0300

deepblue17
121 ●5 ●7 ●11

Same problem here even after upgrading to Sailfish X version 3 on an single sim F5121. Problem occurs with various Sim cards from different providers in different countries (tested mainly in Asia in the last months). The main issue is, that this problem also occurs, if there is no network at all, especially in remote areas. Hence, a reboot doesn't or cannot solve the problem at all. In theory that would not been a problem, but as this message pops up every 5 seconds, it makes the phone useless, especially if you still have a GPS signal and want to use it. Also setting the phone to flight mode (before) you're entering remote areas doesn't help at all. The annoying message still pops up. Sometimes it helps to deactivate the mobile data connection, but not always. After returning to an area with network connection (of a supported provider) a simple reboot solves the problem and it does not occur any longer...until the next border crossing or entering remote area.

answered 2019-11-20 15:22:29 +0300

jovirkku
23703 ●213 ●311 ●247

  moderator

updated 2019-11-20 15:52:37 +0300

This was the first attempt to eliminate the problem:
https://together.jolla.com/question/182073/sim-card-removed-issue-with-sailfishx/?answer=209909#post-id-209909

Using the command line is not convenient for everyone. Therefore, the next step was to automate the same:

On Sailfish 3.2.0, SIM Toolkit is automatically disabled if event "SIM reset" is observed.

• No need to use the command line or do anything else. It is done for you in the background. Some details:
• "SIM reset" is the way ofono reacts to "UICC Reset" command received from the STK app (running on the SIM card). It looks like SIM removal (and re-insertion) to the rest of the system. This false information was causing that "SIM removed" dialog to appear. Under normal circumstances, ofono never enters this internal "SIM reset" state.
• Crossing a state border apparently triggers the false "UICC reset" in case of some SIM cards while most cards work ok.
• STK will stay disabled till the next restart of the device.
• All other SIM functions (except for the interactive STK menu) keep working normally.
  
  

Please report here if this issue keeps persisting after you have updated your phone to OS version 3.2.0.

answered 2018-07-17 09:32:22 +0300

krisko
608 ●19 ●27 ●33

As a workaround you can select network manually.

Note that this does not work when the issue already occurs, so you have to reboot the phone before choosing the network.

This is definitely a SW issue and is present also in SFOS 2.2.0 (I have Xperia X).

answered 2019-06-08 23:22:33 +0300

This post is a wiki. Anyone with karma >75 is welcome to improve it.

updated 2019-06-25 08:37:33 +0300

Raymaen
3463 ●49 ●78 ●67

Maybe a list of affected devices and the exact versions would be helpful:

• Xperia X F5121 since the 2.1.14 release
• Xperia X Dual SIM F5122 since ?
• Xperia XA2 H3113 since 3.0.2.x or 3.0.3.x? (no occurrence under the 3.0.1.14 beta release)
• Xperia XA2 Dual SIM H4213 since ?
• Xperia XA2 single SIM (always when roaming) 3.0.3.10!

answered 2019-06-10 14:56:49 +0300

pakman
911 ●17 ●29 ●31

updated 2019-10-04 01:05:11 +0300

I get this with my F5122 as well, almost always when entering a new country, although it has happened once or twice at home. It has happened both when coming out of flight mode after landing in another country, and when crossing a border by train. Usually a reboot is enough to fix the problem, and now I normally reboot when starting to roam or crossing a border. However, around last Christmas/New Year in France (Marseille) it got so bad that my phone became unusable. Luckily, it mostly affected one SIM, so I was able to disable it and buy a data pack for the other one. That saw me through the rest of my stay, with only the occasional reboot.

As @slowcyclist pointed out, part of what makes this really serious is the impact that this has on other people who are trying to get in touch with you. They won't cut you any slack because you have been let down by the weird phone that you insist on using, and that can't do half of the things that theirs can.

EDIT 2019-07-18: I have just come back from another short trip to France and Spain, and phone-wise it was a nightmare. I will never go abroad again without my trusty old Wileyfox Swift (now running Lineage) as a backup. The problems started when I arrived in France, and found that SIM 1 couldn't send or receive SMS messages, although it could still make calls. I called the SIM issuer, who couldn't see any problem from their end. After a day or two, that SIM started showing the "SIM card removed" message repeatedly. I had to disable it. When I crossed into Spain, SIM 1 was OK, but SIM 2 started giving the same problem. I know it is frustrating for devs to read reports about these kinds of things without detailed logs or diagnostics, however when these problems hit me, I am usually in the company of people who don't have much tolerance with me taking time out to fiddle with my phone rather than getting one that works (like theirs). I am going abroad again in a few weeks, and the people that I will be with are less bothered by this kind of thing: I will try to get some more detailed diagnostics if it happens again.

I know that reflashing to Android and back to SFOS might fix the problem, but:

1. OTOH it might not fix it
2. this is not something that I expect to have to do with a daily driver. I already have another device that needs to be reflashed and set up again from scratch, and I am waiting for the free evening that I will need for that.

EDIT 2019-08-21: I have managed to capture the output of "dmesg" and "journalctl" when I was hit by this problem recently, and I have sent them to Jolla support. Here is a relevant-looking extract from journalctl which appears to show a SIM switching off (I am not an expert on mobile communications though, so someone else may have more insight):

Aug 13 18:05:10 Sailfish statefs[654]: Ofono status  "roaming"
Aug 13 18:05:10 Sailfish statefs[654]: Cellular status Denied -> Roaming
Aug 13 18:05:10 Sailfish statefs[654]: Registered
Aug 13 18:05:10 Sailfish statefs[654]: Operator  QVariant(QString, "I TIM")
Aug 13 18:05:10 Sailfish statefs[654]: Setup current operator properties
Aug 13 18:05:11 Sailfish encsfa-fpd[706]: Code check in 479063
Aug 13 18:05:11 Sailfish encsfa-fpd[706]: Code check in 50937
Aug 13 18:05:12 Sailfish ofonod[712]: export_entries_one_storage_cb with ME failed
Aug 13 18:05:14 Sailfish tracker-extract[3423]: No seccomp support compiled-in.
Aug 13 18:05:14 Sailfish statefs[654]: Ofono status  "searching"
Aug 13 18:05:14 Sailfish statefs[654]: Cellular status Roaming -> Searching
Aug 13 18:05:14 Sailfish ofonod[712]: data reg changed 2 -> 0 (unregistered), attached 0
Aug 13 18:05:14 Sailfish statefs[654]: Unregistered
Aug 13 18:05:15 Sailfish ofonod[712]: SMS History Probe for modem: 0x21acd8
Aug 13 18:05:15 Sailfish ofonod[712]: Registered interface org.ofono.NetworkTime, path /ril_0
Aug 13 18:05:15 Sailfish simkit[3412]: [D] unknown:0 - /ril_0 - Registering services
Aug 13 18:05:15 Sailfish statefs[654]: Cellular_interfaces=( MessageWaiting , SimManager , SimToolkit , VoiceCallManager , ExtSimInfo , )
Aug 13 18:05:15 Sailfish statefs[654]: Get SimToolkit properties
Aug 13 18:05:15 Sailfish ofonod[712]: nw select automatic
Aug 13 18:05:15 Sailfish tart[3208]: [D] unknown:0 - (dial) GetAll() failed: "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownObject" "Method \"GetAll\" with signature \"\" on interface \"org.sailfishos.ofono.mdm.VoiceCallFilter\" doesn't exist\n"
Aug 13 18:05:15 Sailfish tart[3208]: [D] unknown:0 - (incoming) GetAll() failed: "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownObject" "Method \"GetAll\" with signature \"\" on interface \"org.sailfishos.ofono.mdm.VoiceCallFilter\" doesn't exist\n"
Aug 13 18:05:15 Sailfish statefs[654]: Cellular_interfaces=( CallBarring , CallForwarding , CallSettings , CallVolume , ConnectionManager , MessageManager , MessageWaiting , NetworkRegistration , Phonebook , PushNotification , RadioSettings , SimManager , SmartMessaging , SimToolkit , SupplementaryServices , VoiceCallManager , ExtSimInfo , )
Aug 13 18:05:15 Sailfish statefs[654]: Cellular NetworkRegistration w/o SimManager!
Aug 13 18:05:15 Sailfish statefs[654]: Get cellular network properties
Aug 13 18:05:15 Sailfish simkit[3412]: [D] unknown:0 - /ril_0 - QMap(("IdleModeIcon", QVariant(uchar, 0))("IdleModeText", QVariant(QString, ""))("MainMenu", QVariant(QDBusArgument, ))("MainMenuIcon", QVariant(uchar, 0))("MainMenuTitle", QVariant(QString, "")))
Aug 13 18:05:15 Sailfish simkit[3412]: [D] unknown:0 - updating .desktop 0
Aug 13 18:05:15 Sailfish simkit[3412]: [D] unknown:0 - /simkitagent/ril_0 - Object registered
Aug 13 18:05:15 Sailfish statefs[654]: Setup connection manager "/ril_0"
Aug 13 18:05:15 Sailfish statefs[654]: Ofono status  "searching"
Aug 13 18:05:15 Sailfish statefs[654]: Cellular status Offline -> Searching
Aug 13 18:05:16 Sailfish alien_bridge_server[3525]: QThread::wait: Thread tried to wait on itself
Aug 13 18:05:16 Sailfish statefs[654]: Cellular_interfaces=( CallBarring , CallForwarding , CallSettings , CallVolume , CellBroadcast , ConnectionManager , MessageManager , MessageWaiting , NetworkRegistration , Phonebook , PushNotification , RadioSettings , SimManager , SmartMessaging , SimToolkit , SupplementaryServices , VoiceCallManager , ExtSimInfo , )
Aug 13 18:05:16 Sailfish statefs[654]: Ofono status  "roaming"
Aug 13 18:05:16 Sailfish statefs[654]: Cellular status Searching -> Roaming
Aug 13 18:05:16 Sailfish statefs[654]: Registered
Aug 13 18:05:16 Sailfish ofonod[712]: Requested file structure differs from SIM: 6fb7
Aug 13 18:05:18 Sailfish ofonod[712]: export_entries_one_storage_cb with ME failed
Aug 13 18:05:18 Sailfish statefs[654]: Ofono status  "roaming"
Aug 13 18:05:18 Sailfish statefs[654]: Cellular status Searching -> Roaming
Aug 13 18:05:18 Sailfish statefs[654]: Registered
Aug 13 18:05:18 Sailfish ofonod[712]: data reg changed 0 -> 2 (searching), attached 1
Aug 13 18:05:18 Sailfish statefs[654]: Operator  QVariant(QString, "I TIM")
Aug 13 18:05:18 Sailfish statefs[654]: Setup current operator properties
Aug 13 18:05:20 Sailfish statefs[654]: Ofono status  "searching"
Aug 13 18:05:20 Sailfish statefs[654]: Cellular status Roaming -> Searching
Aug 13 18:05:20 Sailfish statefs[654]: Unregistered
Aug 13 18:05:26 Sailfish ofonod[712]: SMS History Remove for modem: 0x217e00
Aug 13 18:05:26 Sailfish simkit[3412]: [D] unknown:0 - /simkitagent/ril_1 - Release
Aug 13 18:05:26 Sailfish simkit[3412]: [D] unknown:0 - updating .desktop 0
Aug 13 18:05:26 Sailfish simkit[3412]: [D] unknown:0 - updating .desktop 0
Aug 13 18:05:26 Sailfish simkit[3412]: [D] unknown:0 - /simkitagent/ril_1 - Object unregistered
Aug 13 18:05:26 Sailfish ofonod[712]: No SIM card
Aug 13 18:05:26 Sailfish statefs[654]: Ofono: no sim
Aug 13 18:05:26 Sailfish statefs[654]: Cellular status Roaming -> Offline
Aug 13 18:05:26 Sailfish statefs[654]: Unregistered
Aug 13 18:05:26 Sailfish ofonod[712]: SIM card OK
Aug 13 18:05:26 Sailfish ofonod[712]: Requested file structure differs from SIM: 6fb7
Aug 13 18:05:26 Sailfish statefs[654]: Technology (type= "wifi" ) tethering is  ""
Aug 13 18:05:26 Sailfish tart[3208]: [D] unknown:0 - (dial) GetAll() failed: "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownObject" "Method \"GetAll\" with signature \"\" on interface \"org.sailfishos.ofono.mdm.VoiceCallFilter\" doesn't exist\n"
Aug 13 18:05:26 Sailfish tart[3208]: [D] unknown:0 - (incoming) GetAll() failed: "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownObject" "Method \"GetAll\" with signature \"\" on interface \"org.sailfishos.ofono.mdm.VoiceCallFilter\" doesn't exist\n"

EDIT 2019-10-03: I received an e-mail from Jolla Support telling me that they think that they have fixed the issue in 3.2.0 -- fingers crossed! I'll be going abroad again for a few days at the end of October, if the release is out by then it will be interesting to see how well it works

answered 2019-06-13 14:34:20 +0300

wb1000000
91 ●2 ●5 ●8

updated 2019-06-24 22:02:05 +0300

I've experienced the same issue with my Xperia XA2 Ultra Dual SIM with 3.0.3.9. Once roaming in NL my DE SIM (congstar) in slot 2 started generating the "SIM card removed" message. The phone was unusable until I disabled this SIM.

What appears to have helped for me so far (2 days without the message, still roaming) is to set "Prefer 3G" instead of "Prefer 4G".

UPDATE: After crossing the border from NL back to DE, the issue started again. Changing from 3G back to 4G on my DE SIM solved it again.

However this weekend I was in the Basel area and both my NL and DE SIM suffered from this issue. The phone was basically useless for the whole weekend. Changing between 2G/3G/4G seemed to alleviate the issue sometimes for an hour or so but after that it started again. Not too happy about that :-|

Best regards,

Jasper

answered 2018-08-01 18:06:22 +0300

ddelamarre
41 ●4 ●4

Hi

I tried it with no success. Maybe did I do it too late in the process. I try this workaround again. Hopefully, it will be better.

Ironically, while versions before 2.1.4 were not at all made for F5122, they worked flawlessly ...

Let us hope a fix will soon be available. I am defending Sailfish & Jolla wherever I can, but having an unreliable phone is annoying : I missed some urgent messages because of that issue.

Regards