Re: Mobile Broadband - how do I trace/debug the modem initialisation?

[Rick Jones <rick activeservice co uk>]

--On Tuesday, October 21, 2008 09:21:36 -0400 Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com> wrote:
¦ > Inelegant though it is, i think NM does need a way to define custom
¦ > init (& de-init?) strings externally. This has been the bane of 
¦ 
¦ God no.  It's like adding text boxes for arbitrary command line
¦ arguments for openvpn.  How are you supposed to know what goes in there?
¦ Do you just google around and find something that some random user
¦ reported worked for them and then try it?  Or if that doesn't work try
¦ something else?  Then you've just wasted 4 hours for something that
¦ should "Just Work".  We don't need to do this, because most of the
¦ differences between hardware can be handled with quirks.  Adding an
¦ arbitrary "enter some command strings" means you've completely lost.
¦ Mobile broadband parts are a lot more standardized than
¦ "Hayes-compatible" modems.

i'm not saying it should be an up-front configuration for the user, but neither should it be embedded in C source. I agree that the general protocol has been well-established, but there are clearly issues with initialisation, as this thread has shown (for 2 cases). Even if these cases are dealt with in source, what happens when a future modem needs something else a bit different? Do you change the init string in source, then regression test against every modem that worked before to make sure nothing's broken, then wait for it to be pushed out to the different distros? It seems to me an external resource file, pre-built for all known cases, but editable by "expert" users and/or quickly updateable independently of the whole package, is much more maintainable.

It's how I'd do it anyway ...

Cheers, Rick