Re: NetworkManager integrated with ModemManager

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Mon, 2009-02-09 at 15:32 +0200, Tambet Ingo wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 15:14, Darren Albers <dalbers gmail com> wrote:
> >> With ModemManager will the workarounds have to be done in the code or
> >> is there some method that an end-user can drop chat script in to
> >> ModemManager?   For example I have a Blackberry that I tether using
> >> Barry and it has a non-standard method of creating a serial port.   I
> >> would like to help get this working but I am not much of a developer.
> 
> The workarounds are implemented in ModemManager as plugins in C. I
> find it hilarious how people miss having to know AT commands by heart
> and to be required to enter them to get their modem connected. I
> understand it could be the only way to get your modem connected, but
> that problem should be fixed by developers, not by users. Sort of the
> point of whole NM, to make things just work.
> 
> All that said...  I've been planning to write a ModemManager plugin
> that does exactly that, but not to torture people, but to make it
> easier for them to contribute back - if we can see which commands are
> required for certain modem, we can do that in ModemManager.

Ugh; as long as we make it clear it's for debugging and not actually
supported for general use or anything.

> > Ahh I think I see now, so we would need to write an interface to
> > something like wvdial or even direct to Barry for this to work?
> 
> While it's possible to use anything (like wvdial, barry), it usually
> doesn't make much sense (other than for testing). There can be exactly
> one DBus service that provides ModemManager API so the distro can not
> ship the hack which only works with your modem (so you'll never have
> an works-out-of-box solution).

For the blackberry stuff specifically, I'd recommend that a ModemManager
plugin be written using libbarry that basically does what the barry ppp
stuff does internally.  PIN unlocking and such has to be handled through
libbarry, and much of the communication with the device is handled
through libbarry  too, not necessarily through the serial port.

This would be the right way to do it, not a hack like using wvdial or
barry utils themselves.

Dan