User status is always offline [presence is disabled] on matrix.org server

[jeangb]

No matter what client I use (android, iOs, web) my status is offline in the room details and member section.
Sometimes it's "Offline 4s ago" and the "4s ago" may represent the last time I posted a message.

Here are some logs from browser (chrome) : https://gist.github.com/jeangb/0cccd6b1a2093228e3064ddb05beeb91

[bakfietz]

In some rooms, people's status is allways offline, in some rooms it seems to work fine. Anyway I can help troubleshoot/fix this?

[lampholder]

I believe this is the result of presence's being turned off on matrix.org homeserver for performance reasons. It would be nice to do better - Offline != Presence Unknown, but I believe this is tricky.

[darkuranium]

This is most definitely a bug, @lampholder. I know the other person has presence on, and yet they can be shown as online in one client, offline in another, and "idle for 6 hours" in a third (even if I've just talked to them).

In fact, it even shows me as being (or idle) offline sometimes... it's an incredibly annoying bug, as I'll sometimes wait for someone to come online, only to find out they've been online all day.

[t3chguy]

@darkuranium are you using the matrix.org homeserver? If so then it is not a bug, it is due to the fact that the matrix.org HS has had its Presence frozen/disabled due to it using too many resources. AS @lampholder TOLD YOU.

[darkuranium]

@t3chguy: Relax, I fucking misunderstood, okay? Jesus christ, what's wrong with you people.

And ultimately, it doesn't matter. What matters is whether it works or not; it doesn't work as it was supposed to, so it's a fault. Whether it's a software bug or not is not my problem.

[ara4n]

@t3chguy, please don't yell at folks... @darkuranium: yup, it sucks and it is definitely a bug. We'll see about turning it back on this week.

[luksch]

Any news on that? I experience the same behavior (again?) on the matrix hoe server

[metrowave]

mine also is turned off all the time!
I'm new to Matrix, is there another server or a way that I can access the same room and not be offline?

[t3chguy]

@metrowave https://www.hello-matrix.net/public_servers.php

[metrowave]

@t3chguy, many thanks... It is magically fixed. Now my status is correctly updated :)

[Nostradamos]

Still not working for me, neither in riot.im/develop nor in latest riot-web app from ubuntu ppa.

[lampholder]

We still haven't turned it on, at least not permanently.

We do need to do better with this - at the very least we shouldn't be making false claims about users' presence. Could we tactically switch OFFLINE for UNKNOWN, or perhaps OFFLINE/UNKNOWN?

[lampholder]

Switching to P1 because I feel this feature's (at least apparent) malfunctioning creates a very bad impression with users.

[ghost]

So in case this bug would have no solution?

[lampholder]

Well, there are two solutions:

• in the short term, somehow stop the UX being so confusing
• in the longer term, get the presence feature reenabled on matrix.org so that we reliably advertise user status

[darkuranium]

@lampholder For the short term, I think your idea of adding an "unknown" option is the best.

[magykjames]

I just set it up and talked two others into joining as well, and we all three show up as offline. This issue still remains as of August 13, 2017 unless I'm missing a setting somewhere. I assumed maybe it was some sort of privacy setting.

[t3chguy]

@magykjames since this issue is still open, yes it still exists.

[shmerl]

is there any ETA on fixing this on matrix.org, or at least improving the client to report unknown status?

[t3chguy]

@shmerl probably best thing to track is Dendrite: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tkMNpIpPjvuDJWjPFbw_xzNzOHBA-Hp50Rkpcr43xTw

[lampholder]

Fixing presence/rolling out Dendrite is going to take a while, and in the meantime this continues to confuse people.

There's probably another solution whereby individual servers could expose whether or not they're supporting presence, which could then be aggregated into a status value that a homeserver could share with its client, so that the client could make a decision whether to show 'Presence data unavailable' for users on a given homeserver (regardless of the last value it got down the sync).

In the absence of any supporting infrastructure for the above or the desire to spend undue time on overengineering wallpaper, I know it's a little distasteful, but could we just hard code riot web, android and iOS to display 'Presence data unavailable' for all users on matrix.org for now?

[turt2live]

There's probably another solution whereby individual servers could expose whether or not they're supporting presence, which could then be aggregated into a status value

Related: https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues/4398

[rodneyrod]

@lampholder What about temporarily adopting the Telegram model? It doesn't track absolute online status.

[phoerious]

This issue is two years old now and the last activity here was 12 months ago. Has there been any progress on this matter? Seeing everyone offline with "last seen 700+ days ago" is very irritating.

[Midek]

@phoerious Just host your own HS with presence enabled instead. Matrix is supposed to be decentralised anyway.

[MightyCreak]

@Midek Not everyone has the skills, the time, or the money to host their own matrix server. Especially since matrix needs around 4GB of RAM, and Synapse still hasn't reached 1.0, and Dendrite is supposed to replace it which, I project, won't be a piece of cake to migrate to (especially if you're not a professional sysadmin).

And also the root of the issue is potentially quite serious because, if I understand correctly, it means that there is a scalability issue within the Matrix code.

I don't have my own server, but I'm paying Matrix on Patreon, so I feel, in a way, that I'm paying for a service, and I think it's legit to ask why this 2 years old major p1 bug (as the labels say) is still not addressed, don't you think?

[phoerious]

I am using Matrix, because I do not want to host my own messaging server. I ran a ZNC for years and keeping it updated and securely configured is just something I don't have the time for. As said before, this should be fixed by Matrix not by me running my own instance. If that's a problem, then there really is a scalability issue that needs to be addressed and if that does not happen, then people will just keeping using WhatsApp or whatever.

[lampholder]

Hi all - thanks for your comments; we know this is an annoying feature not to support on matrix.org but I'm afraid it hasn't yet risen to the top of the pile :(

If you're interested in what we're working on ahead of specific presence scalability, please take a look at the homeserver roadmap and the riot web roadmap - some of the homeserver work actually does address scalability issues generally, so should get us closer to being able to reenable presence on matrix.org.

Seeing everyone offline with "last seen 700+ days ago" is very irritating.

I don't think you should be seeing this (if you're using riot.im/app or /develop or desktop anyway) - the (outdated) presence data should be being hidden if the app is configured correctly.

[phoerious]

I don't think you should be seeing this (if you're using riot.im/app or /develop or desktop anyway) - the (outdated) presence data should be being hidden if the app is configured correctly.

Nope, matrix.org, most recent versions of Riot Android/Desktop, seeing exactly that.

[liberodark]

No new about this ?
Any fix for that ?

Best Regards

[t3chguy]

I don't think matrix.org is planning on re-enabling presence any time soon, you may wish to register on a different server. Communications will still work between servers due to federation.

[TheJJ]

Would it be possible to let homeservers report their presence-enabled-status and then disable graying out users on a client? Just like it's done with the config.json, but in a way the server reports this itself.

This is important as many other homeservers also have presence disabled on purpose.

I've been asked many times why users are grayed out, and for them it's a small (but effective) annoyance.

edit: ah, that's element-hq/element-meta#1241 :)

[MightyCreak]

This issue is 4.5 years old. I'd be interested to know if there's a technical solution for this issue (not a workaround)?

For instance, I've seen that the switch to Redis allowed to add more workers, could it have been used to re-enable presence on matrix.org? Is the issue about the way presence is coded? Does the current implementation use too much resources? Can it be optimized? If not, what's the plan?

In the end, presence is a useful feature, and although a company should not use matrix.org as their homeserver, the fact it is disabled does not provide a very good demo. I'm afraid this could have a negative impact on a decision maker.

[vgmoose]

Seems like matrix-org/synapse#3971 may be a good issue to track for the technical limitations

[JPustkuchen]

This is still an open issue for us, we're using paid EMS Hosting so I guess it should at least work there? ;) Or what are we doing wrong in expecting this to simply work with paid hosting?

[t3chguy]

@JPustkuchen chat to your EMS support, only they know your config.

[JPustkuchen]

Thank you @t3chguy, I just wrote them to see what's the problem.

[JPustkuchen]

Ok EMS Support says they also have this disabled for paying customers due to the technical reasons given above (performance). They're waiting for a fix of these issues. A bit funny that a status indicator is such a big problem for a project of this size... ;)

[t3chguy]

The performance issue on the server-side - Synapse - not Element.
If you think about it, presence has to be propagated to every other device of every user in every room that a user is in, that very quickly ramps up to a lot of users*devices.

Closing in favour of matrix-org/synapse#9478

[XdekHckr]

Still not fixed lmao. You can't even setup your status. You can't even disable seen message. Matrix and element is crap.