Re: Mobile broadband connects to wrong USB device

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Wed, 2009-01-07 at 22:01 -0700, Mike Butash wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I tend to agree with Ben that alternative/roaming usb serial devices
> tend to be a common issue for me, especially usb to serial adapters (I
> do networks, so usb to serial console ports are a big thing).  Problem
> for me has always been NOT to have my serial console adapter attached in
> older versions of ubuntu using pon/poff lest it come up not on ttyUSB0
> and 1, but still a relevant issue apparently with a functional NM
> handling broadband wwan in ibex.  
> 
> I've considered using udev rules to recognize the card specifically and
> name it a unique device(s).  I was hoping with changes to NM and hal,
> that hal would be able to track which usb devices actually when it roams
> (where my card by its usb id or vendor), but alas it still does not.  

The solution to this problem is a modem prober, which is now in
udev-extras (see git.kernel.org), which will populate the udev database
with the capabilities of a particular USB TTY device.  NetworkManager
will be modified to ask the udev database about these capabilities, and
thus automatically determine what ports will work and what ports won't,
and thus take the fdi file stuff out of the loop.  It's a problem, and
it's being fixed.

Dan

> Reading this with Ben's issue also being similar to mine, do others
> experience the same?  Would it be worth doing so?  Granted the same
> could be said for my usb->serial consoles, but seems these should be
> made to be a bit less generic than a common serial tty port, or at least
> symlink to the right ports dynamically with something more identifiable.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> -mb
> 
> 
> On Tue, 2009-01-06 at 11:02 +1100, Ben wrote:
> > Hello, I have a Dell Mini which uses a 5530 mobile wireless card. This 
> > works fine with wvdial etc. When I try to add a new wireless broadband 
> > connection using Network Manager, I select Vodafone (as they are the 
> > provider), and then when I try to connect to it, I can see in the top 
> > right where the Network Manager icon is trying to connect, if I move my 
> > mouse over it I can see that it says it's trying to connect to USB0, 
> > however the wireless card is actually using USB4.
> > 
> > So, my question is, how can I get behind the scenes of the new network 
> > connection to make it try to connect to USB4 (/dev/ttyUSB4) instead of 
> > USB0? There doesn't seem to be anything of interest in my ~/.gconf/* dirs.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Ben.
> > _______________________________________________
> > NetworkManager-list mailing list
> > NetworkManager-list gnome org
> > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/networkmanager-list
> > 
> 
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