GetNetworkTime sometimes returns empty results

[Tony Espy]

The org.ofono.NetworkTime interface is being created properly for rilmodem-based devices, and NITZ messages are being processed, but occasionally the received time is not available, and an empty string is returned in response to a GetNetworkTime method call.

Tested on mako running image u76 with both US T-Mobile and AT&T SIMs.

[Martti Piirainen (piiramar)]

Just checking, is this a misunderstanding of the API? org.ofono.NetworkTime indeed does not expose any properties - but there is a method for retrieving the time, and a signal on a new time. This is what D-Bus introspection gives me:

  dbus-send --system --type=method_call --print-reply --dest=org.ofono /ril_0 org.freedesktop.DBus.Introspectable.Introspect

  <interface name="org.ofono.NetworkTime">
   <method name="GetNetworkTime">
    <arg name="time" type="a{sv}" direction="out"/>
   </method>
   <signal name="NetworkTimeChanged">
    <arg name="time" type="a{sv}"/>
   </signal>
  </interface>

I tested this with two Finnish operators (Sonera and Saunalahti), each one in the UMTS (default) and GSM (forced via 'set-tech-preference' script) radio networks.
  dbus-send --print-reply --system --dest=org.ofono /ril_0 org.ofono.NetworkTime.GetNetworkTime
  dbus-monitor --system interface='org.ofono.NetworkTime'
Both the method call and the signal worked for me in all tests.

[Tony Espy (awe)]

Yea, my description is a bit off, I'll correct it.

That said, using an US-based AT&T SIM, I'm seeing an empty response to GetNetworkTime. I suspect there may be some kind of race condition. Note, I had confirmed receipt of the NITZ message using OFONO_RIL_TRACE, and also that the core code was being notified via a debug statement.

[Tony Espy (awe)]

I can't explain, but somehow this is working for me after we landed the last version of ofono with the nettime code merged into out github trunk.

I'm going to change the Status to FixReleased.

Feel free to comment/re-open if you disagree...

[Tony Espy (awe)]

While reviewing a pull request related to NetworkTime:

https://github.com/rilmodem/ofono/pull/97

I noticed two things after running a series of reboots and checking network time availability.

1. Occasionally a NITZ message isn't sent to the device after startup. This could be an optimization of rild.

2. In very rare circumstances, it's possible for GetNetworkTime to return a dictionary that lacks MobileNetworkCode or MobileCountryCode. The netttime plugin gets these from netreg, and if the values returned are NULL, then ofono's DBus code ( ofono_dbus_dict_append() ) doesn't append the key/value pair to the dictionary.

[Tony Espy (awe)]

Changed Status back to FixReleased as there's not much we can do code-wise about either problem mentioned in comment #4.