Re: serial connections

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Mon, 2008-04-28 at 09:16 +0400, Vitja Makarov wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> Will it be possible to manually specify serial interface for broadband
> connection, as well as its type.
> I don't think hal could take care of all the mobile phones. It
> couldn't guess what is attached to RS-232 port which could be
> still used. That should make bluethooth integration easy.

The right way to go is still to teach HAL about what each of the cards
supports.  That can be through static tagging like we do now, or
inspecting serial ports that come up and issuing AT+GCAP to figure out
if (a) anything is on that port, and (b) what capabilities the device
supports.

Your phone _must_ support AT+GCAP, since that's part of both the
IS-707-A and GSM-07.07 standards.  Therefore we can dynamically detect
them, but that detection should be in _one_ place, and that place is
HAL.  We certainly don't want all of NM, umtsmon, comgt, and VMC trying
to do this, because to talk to the card you need exclusive access, and
then everyone just races to get it.  So the path forward is to make HAL
aware of the capabilities of the devices you've just plugged in.

Bluetooth integration will be somewhat different.  You'll tell NM about
the phones you've got, what their BT MAC is, and the connection details.
This will likely be through some sort of Wizard, along the same lines as
Antti is working on for mobile broadband.  You'll always see the phones
you have connections for in the menu, as long as your BT controller is
plugged in an turned on.  When you select your phone, NM will ask Bluez
to connect to the device, then ask Bluez to create the rfcomm port, and
then use the rfcomm port to do PPP.  You shouldn't ever need to specify
the actual serial port to be used.

Dan