Description

The Share Contact action does nothing when used with a MeshCore Companion source connected via TCP (tested with pymc and official firmware v1.15, MeshMonitor v4.10.2 Docker). No advert packet appears in the Packet Monitor or MQTT observer. The user gets no actionable error — the UI shows a generic failure string or nothing at all.

Root Cause

Three layers combine to produce a silent failure:

1. Native backend (src/server/meshcoreNativeBackend.ts:887–896)
c.shareContact(publicKey) calls meshcore.js over the TCP connection. If the firmware doesn't ACK CMD_SHARE_CONTACT (opcode 16) or the socket is degraded, the call throws. The error propagates up to sendBridgeCommand, which returns { success: false }.

2. Manager swallows the error (src/server/meshcoreManager.ts:2067–2087)
The shareContact() method logs a WARN and returns false, which causes the HTTP route to respond with 409 — but the descriptive error text from the backend is available and not forwarded.

3. UI ignores the server error text (src/components/MeshCore/MeshCoreContactDetailPanel.tsx:344)
The 409 response body contains the real error, but the component discards it and displays a hardcoded generic i18n string, giving the user zero actionable information.

Why "advert broadcasted" appears in other cases

That green notification fires from the source's own firmware-join advert — a different code path. It is unrelated to the Share Contact button.

Reproduction Steps

1. Connect a MeshCore Companion source via TCP (pymc or official firmware v1.15).
2. Open a contact → Actions → Share Contact → OK.
3. No advert packet appears in Packet Monitor or MQTT observer.
4. Check Docker logs: docker logs meshmonitor | grep "share_contact" — a WARN log with the real failure reason is present but never surfaced to the user.

Relevant Files

Suggested Fix

1. Propagate server error text to UI — in MeshCoreContactDetailPanel.tsx:344, use the error field from the 409 response body instead of the hardcoded i18n string.
2. Add TCP-specific diagnostics — in meshcoreNativeBackend.ts:894, log the rejection/result from c.shareContact() before it propagates so the WARN log identifies whether it's a socket issue or firmware non-response.

Authored by NodeZero 0️⃣