Re: Network-Manager and Tethered Blackberry's

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Tue, 2009-01-27 at 22:32 -0500, Darren Albers wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 12:01 PM, Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com> wrote:
> > On Sun, 2009-01-25 at 20:33 -0500, Darren Albers wrote:
> >> On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 10:49 PM, Darren Albers <dalbers gmail com> wrote:
> >> > I recently replaced my trusty Aircard 860 with a Blackberry Bold (So I
> >> > no longer had to carry a Blackberry and an Aircard).
> >> >
> >> > The device works great using Barry
> >> > (http://www.netdirect.ca/software/packages/barry/) and their provided
> >> > chatscript but it uses the pty option to call their application called
> >> > pppob which is used to communicate with the blackberry and initialize
> >> > modem mode.
> >> >
> >> > I assume there is no way for Network-Manager to call the pty option?
> >> >
> >>
> >> Rick from the Barry Mailing list pointed me to his application
> >> XmBlackberry which allows the Blackberry to be called over
> >> /dev/bbmodem0
> >>
> >> Is there any documentation on what is needed in the 10-modem.fdi so
> >> that Network Manager can recognize this device as a GSM Modem?
> >
> > is /dev/bbmodem0 a serial port you can connect to with minicom and do a
> > minimal ATI or AT+GCAP or something?  Can you grab that output for me if
> > you can get it?
> >
> > Next, you'll want the /sbin/lsusb information for the BB for now, look
> > for the block that has "/dev/bbmodem0" in it, which you can use to
> > modify 10-modem.fdi.
> >
> > Dan
> >
> >
> >
> 
> If I connect with a Password on the device it first tells me "ERROR NO
> PASSWORD".   I will need to see if I can figure out the syntax it
> expects, Barry has really good documentation so I should be able to
> find that.
> 
> Once I disable the password on the device I get:
> 
> OK
> ATI
> Research In Motion BlackBerry IP Modem
> 
> OK
> AT+GCAP
> +GCAP:
> 
> OK

Whee!  pppob uses libbarry to talk the proprietary USB protocol that the
blackberries apparently require.  That's going to be fun.  Not going to
work without more investigation, which would be figuring out exactly
what pppob needs to do (it handles some of the device password stuff)
and how to fit that into NM or MM.  Ideally an MM plugin that eventually
exposes a serial port that can then have PPP run over it.

Dan