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NowSMS Support Forums ⬆ NowSMS Support - MMS & Advanced Issues ⬆ Archive through December 19, 2005 ⬆ |
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| Author | Message | |||
| Gareth Reakes New member Username: Gareth_reakes Post Number: 1 Registered: 08-2005 |
Hi, I have a siemens mc35 i modem and am using it to retrieve MMS sent to it. After a certain amount of time (2-4 weeks) the modem seems to be placed into a strange state that it does not recover from. To fix this I have to power cycle and restart the MMS service. This is obviously not very good. From the log it seems it gets into a funny state. It says: Error: Error initializing SMSC interface 'MC35(GPRS)'. Interface is not available. Looking at the full log this does seem to happen now and again without me noticing - NowMMS seems to recover without any intervention (perhaps it issues an AT reset command of some kind in some cases but not others?) Are there any more logs or information that would be helpful in diagnosing this problem? | |||
| Gareth Reakes New member Username: Gareth_reakes Post Number: 2 Registered: 08-2005 |
Hi again, I could really do with some hepl with this. It is preventing me from recommending this solution to my clients. Cheers, Gareth | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Bryce Post Number: 4958 Registered: 10-2002 |
Hi Gareth, In those situations, does power cycling the modem alone (without restarting NowSMS) resolve the problem? The reason I ask ... is because NowSMS should be continually trying to re-establish communications with the modem. Although it may take up to 10 minutes between retries if the modem has been off-line for some time. Note that in recent versions we have decreased this retry to 5 minutes, and added additional InitRetryDelay timing parameter settings, described in http://support.nowsms.com/discus/messages/1/5972.html. If power cycling the modem resolves the problem, then there is likely little that we can do to resolve the problem, as it sounds like the modem has gone a bit flaky. But here's an idea that might make a difference. Try editing SMSGW.INI, and under the [ModemName] section, add: CommandPreInit1=AT+CFUN=1 For many modems, this forces a reset which might be helpful in this case. Also, note the AlertEMail options described in that above thread that I referenced, so that you can get an e-mail alert when the modem goes off-line. You do need to update to a recent patch for some of these new settings to be enabled. The latest can be downloaded from http://www.nowsms.com/download/latestpatch.zip. This response is a bit scrambled, so let me try to sum up my recommendations ... 1.) Download the latest patch. (Primarily so you can get the AlertEMail functionality, which will help in testing.) 2.) Enable the SMSDEBUG.LOG (on the "Serial #" page of the config). This way, when the modem goes off-line, we can look at the SMSDEBUG.LOG to see what it shows. 3.) Edit SMSGW.INI, to add the CommandPreInit1 setting that I recommended above. 4.) Watch for e-mail alerts of the modem going off-line. (For testing, you might just want to turn the modem off, wait for the alert, then turn it back on, to confirm that the alerts are working.) 5.) If the modem goes off-line, try turning it off and back on to see if NowSMS recovers. (Allow 15 minutes just to play it safe.) 6.) Whether NowSMS recovers or doesn't recover, I'd like to see the SMSDEBUG.LOG to see if it provides any clues. -bn | |||
| Gareth Reakes New member Username: Gareth_reakes Post Number: 3 Registered: 08-2005 |
Hi, It does try to establish that conneciton. You can see it failing in the smsout log. A power cycle is required, although I can't say if I definitely need to restart the service. Up until now I have, but I will try without it next time and report back. This seems to happen with different MC35s. It does not happen if they are plugged into kannel rather than NowMMS, however that is using different functionality of the modem. Regards, Gareth | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Bryce Post Number: 5021 Registered: 10-2002 |
Hi Gareth, I bet if you were using us only for SMS (like with Kannel), there wouldn't be a problem. It sounds like what is happening is that there is a problem after the GPRS connection is dropped, where the modem ends up in an unstable state. (A GPRS connection needs to be initiated each time we go to retrieve an MMS ... and unfortunately with that modem, we cannot keep the GPRS connection active at the same time as we are using it in GSM mode for sending/receiving SMS. And we need to receive the MMS notifications in GSM mode over SMS.) So let's see if power cycling the modem makes the difference, or if NowSMS seems to be stuck. I'm suspecting that power cycling the modem is what is required, and that NowSMS will automatically recover when the modem comes back. Assuming that NowSMS does recover after the modem is power cycled, then we need to determine if the modem can be "woken up" from its unstable state. So the time after, when this happens again, stop the NowSMS service. Go into HyperTerminal, and open up a connection to the COM port with the modem. Hit Enter a couple of times, and then try typing the following commands, pressing enter at the end of each command: ATZ AT+CSMS=0 AT+CMGF=0 Do the above return OK? If any of the above return ERROR, try typing the following command: AT+CFUN=1 Does it return OK ... if so, try the commands above again. Any difference? And if there is no response back to any of the above, or only garbage response ... Try pressing +++ATH0 (then press Enter), and see if that improves things. Let me know, and we'll see if we can get a solution sorted. -bn | |||
| Gareth Reakes New member Username: Gareth_reakes Post Number: 9 Registered: 08-2005 |
It happened again. Just power cycle does fix it. Will try what you suggest next time it happens. Regards, Gareth | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Bryce Post Number: 5101 Registered: 10-2002 |
Hi Gareth, You might also want to give v5.51j a try. We quietly updated http://www.nowsms.com/download/latestpatch.zip with this version. Basically, if a modem goes non-responsive, we automatically try a variety of techniques, like I described in the previous message. Unfortunately, we've only been able to test it against "forced problems" ... situations where we could manually put the modem into a known unresponsive state. And then we could test that this update was able to revive the modem. But, it's impossible to say if this will make a difference for a modem that is going unresponsive for an unknown reason. But it's worth a try. -bn | |||
