Temporary network failure may prevent E2EE keys from being shared

[nailyk-fr]

Creating duplicate of element-hq/element-web#18639 by @novocaine

Steps to reproduce

1. During an operation that involves sending keys with another user, Alice experiences a network failure
2. Bob doesn't receive Alice's keys, and they might not be sent again for an undetermined amount of time

What happened?

Bob will see messages like ** Unable to decrypt: The sender's device has not sent us the keys for this message. ** when trying to read Alice's messages, until such time as Alice's keys are sent again

Usually, it prevents any further message to be sent and we have to create another p2p room to be able to talk again.

This only happened to me in case of poor network.

What did you expect?

The keys should be resent shortly after connectivity resumes.

Operating system

Any

Browser information

Any

URL for webapp

app.element.io + https://matrix.nailyk.fr/riot/

[t3chguy]

matrix-js-sdk now has a queue-and-retry policy for to-device messages, so this should not be the case anymore. element-hq/element-web#18639 was closed as fixed, so why is this duplicate being created @nailyk-fr ?

[nailyk-fr]

Hello,

I opened this one because I encountered exactly the same issue some weeks ago, some days ago, and again yesterday. Screenshot is from yesterday 🙂

[nailyk-fr]

Happened again today :

What can I do to receive the messages ?
What can I do to provide relevant information on how to fix ?
As a bonus, if you can explain to me how to prevent this to happens, I will really appreciate !

Thanks a lot in advance for your answer !

Edit : When it is that bad (so many broken messages) we have to open a new room as the key never arrives....

[t3chguy]

decryption key withheld normally means the sender has enabled "Only send to verified devices" and they haven't verified you

[nailyk-fr]

You are right, it is different message indeed.
We successfully sent messages yesterday and earlier today in this chat.
I check and there are no new session on any side. Confirmed by the other peer, no new session.

On Android message is a bit different :

We again had to open another chat room. (Which, BTW, is hard because you cannot create a p2p room while already having one)

[richvdh]

Duplicate of element-hq/element-meta#245