Missing .local/share/signal-cli/data/NNNNNN.d/recipients-store causes crash on startup

[ppar]

Summary:

Using scli to link an existing account seems to work fine, but starting the client crashes because ~/ .local/share/signal-cli/data/NNNNNN.d/recipients-store is missing.

Environment:

• Debian 11 server, x86_64, no Xorg / wayland
• signal-cli installed using debian packages from https://packaging.gitlab.io/signal-cli/installation/standalone/ , version 0.11.5.1 (tried both -native and -jre)
• scli downloaded from https://github.com/isamert/scli/releases/download/v0.7.1/scli-v0.7.1.tar.gz
• scli's dependencies installed with apt based on the old .deb package from https://gitlab.com/packaging/scli/

  Depends: python3-urwid, python3-urwid-readline, python3-pyqrcode, signal-cli-jre, dbus, python3

• dedicated UNIX user account with empty home dir

Steps to reproduce:

• Link it - seems to work fine

  myusername@myservername:~$ ./scli-v0.7.1/scli link --name myservername-071-01
  Retrieving QR code, please wait...
  ....
  Scan the QR code with Signal app on your phone and wait for the linking process to finish.
  You might need to zoom out for the QR code to display properly.
  This may take a moment...
  Receiving data for the first time...
  Done.

• Try to run it - crashes because something hasn't created that file

  myusername@myservername:~$ ./scli-v0.7.1/scli
  Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/myusername/./scli-v0.7.1/scli", line 1029, in parse_data_file
      indivs = self._get_recipients()
  File "/home/myusername/./scli-v0.7.1/scli", line 1089, in _get_recipients
      with open(recipients_store_file, encoding="utf-8") as f:
  FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/myusername/.local/share/signal-cli/data/NNNNNN.d/recipients-store'
  
  During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
  
  Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/myusername/./scli-v0.7.1/scli", line 5271, in <module>
      main()
  File "/home/myusername/./scli-v0.7.1/scli", line 5253, in main
      coord = Coordinate()
  File "/home/myusername/./scli-v0.7.1/scli", line 4514, in __init__
      self._contacts = Contacts(sigdata)
  File "/home/myusername/./scli-v0.7.1/scli", line 1219, in __init__
      self.reload()
  File "/home/myusername/./scli-v0.7.1/scli", line 1222, in reload
      indivs_dicts, groups_dicts = self.sigdata.parse_data_file()
  File "/home/myusername/./scli-v0.7.1/scli", line 1031, in parse_data_file
      indivs = self._get_recipients_v1()
  File "/home/myusername/./scli-v0.7.1/scli", line 1126, in _get_recipients_v1
      for cont in self._data['contactStore']['contacts']:
  KeyError: 'contactStore'

• Files that were created under .local:

  myusername@myservername:~$ find .local -ls
  264613      4 drwxr-xr-x   3 myusername   myusername       4096 joulu 14 03:13 .local
  264614      4 drwxr-xr-x   4 myusername   myusername       4096 joulu 14 03:13 .local/share
  264615      4 drwxr-xr-x   3 myusername   myusername       4096 joulu 14 03:13 .local/share/scli
  264616      4 drwxr-xr-x   2 myusername   myusername       4096 joulu 14 03:13 .local/share/scli/attachments
  268762      4 drwx------   3 myusername   myusername       4096 joulu 14 03:13 .local/share/signal-cli
  268763      4 drwx------   3 myusername   myusername       4096 joulu 14 03:13 .local/share/signal-cli/data
  268766      4 drwx------   2 myusername   myusername       4096 joulu 14 03:15 .local/share/signal-cli/data/NNNNNN.d
  268767    156 -rw-r--r--   1 myusername   myusername     159744 joulu 14 03:14 .local/share/signal-cli/data/NNNNNN.d/account.db
  268765      4 -rw-------   1 myusername   myusername       1140 joulu 14 03:14 .local/share/signal-cli/data/NNNNNN
  268764      4 -rw-------   1 myusername   myusername        180 joulu 14 03:13 .local/share/signal-cli/data/accounts.json

Tests as per README.md:

• Testing "receive" - either shows nothing, or a bunch of sync messages confirming the account was linked successfully

  myusername@myservername:~$ signal-cli -u +MYPHONENR receive
  ....
  Envelope from: “MYNAME” +MYPHONENR (device: 1) to +MYPHONENR
  Timestamp: 1670985873616 (2022-12-14T02:44:33.616Z)
  Server timestamps: received: 1670985874175 (2022-12-14T02:44:34.175Z) delivered: 1670986060362 (2022-12-14T02:47:40.362Z)
  Received a sync message
  ....

• Testing "daemon" fails because DISPLAY is not set. This is a server machine, so no X11 or friends. Is this test actually relevant for scli? AFAIK it executes signal-cli in a subprocess and I guess talks to it over stdout/stdin, does it need a dbus daemon running somewhere?

  myusername@myservername:~$ signal-cli -u +MYPHONENR daemon
  INFO  DaemonCommand - Starting daemon in single-account mode for +MYPHONENR
  org.freedesktop.dbus.exceptions.AddressResolvingException: Cannot Resolve Session Bus Address: DISPLAY variable not set
          at org.freedesktop.dbus.utils.AddressBuilder.getSessionConnection(AddressBuilder.java:64)
          at org.freedesktop.dbus.connections.impl.DBusConnectionBuilder.forSessionBus(DBusConnectionBuilder.java:42)
          at org.freedesktop.dbus.connections.impl.DBusConnectionBuilder.forType(DBusConnectionBuilder.java:89)
          at org.freedesktop.dbus.connections.impl.DBusConnectionBuilder.forType(DBusConnectionBuilder.java:76)
          at org.asamk.signal.commands.DaemonCommand.runDbus(DaemonCommand.java:385)
          at org.asamk.signal.commands.DaemonCommand.runDbusSingleAccount(DaemonCommand.java:327)
          at org.asamk.signal.commands.DaemonCommand.handleCommand(DaemonCommand.java:158)
          at org.asamk.signal.App.handleLocalCommand(App.java:289)
          at org.asamk.signal.App.init(App.java:229)
          at org.asamk.signal.Main.main(Main.java:60)

[exquo]

The missing recipients-store issue is #202. It has been fixed in master, but the releases had not been updated, till now. I have made a new release that catches up with it. Try using v0.7.2, or just clone this repo with git.

[exquo]

Testing "daemon" fails because DISPLAY is not set. This is a server machine, so no X11 or friends.

Scli listens to signal-cli's daemon's stdout, but sends commands to its dbus service (see also my reply in #207).

These were the choices available at the time scli has been written. Now that signal-cli offers JSON-RPC over stdin/out that would have been preferred, and would remove the dbus dependency.

X11 or a desktop environment is not required for scli, as long as the DBUS session is running. But dbus might fail to start if the $DISPLAY variable is not set, as in #200 or AsamK/signal-cli#1070. There are several questions on stackoverflow etc about this (I have tried googling "dbus display not set"). One way around this seems to be: execute export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS="". DBus docs on this: https://dbus.freedesktop.org/doc/dbus-launch.1.html. Maybe also helpful: https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli/wiki/DBus-service#macos-and-dbus-send.