Re: ModemManager : 3G dongle disconnection

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Mon, 2010-07-05 at 19:27 +0800, Bin Li wrote:
> 2010/7/2 Stéphane Régnier <sregnier ubiquiet com>:
> > Dear programmer,
> >
> > I have difficulties to solve my disconnection problem, I hope you can
> > help.
> >
> > I'm using a 3G usb key, huawei e180, with NetworkManager 0.8 and
> > ModemManager 0.3. Once connected, without using the network and after
> > exactly 30 minutes, it disconnects and never comes back until I restart
> > ModemManager.
> > Looking to ModemManager traces I found :
> > ** Message: (ttyUSB1) closing serial device...
> > ** Message: (Huawei): GSM
> > modem /sys/devices/platform/ehci-omap.0/usb1/1-1 claimed port ttyUSB1
> > ** Message: (ttyUSB0) closing serial device...
> > ** Message: Modem /org/freedesktop/ModemManager/Modems/0: state changed
> > (connected -> disconnecting)
> > ** Message: Modem /org/freedesktop/ModemManager/Modems/0: state changed
> > (disconnecting -> connected)
> > ** Message: Modem /org/freedesktop/ModemManager/Modems/0: state changed
> > (connected -> disconnecting)
> > ** Message: Modem /org/freedesktop/ModemManager/Modems/0: state changed
> > (disconnecting -> connected)
> >
> > In NetworkManager, traces corresponding to a dbus activate :
> > NM: <info>  Activation (ttyUSB0) starting connection 'bouyguestel'
> > NM: <info>  (ttyUSB0): device state change: 3 -> 4 (reason 0)
> > NM: <info>  Activation (ttyUSB0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare)
> > scheduled...
> > NM: <info>  Activation (ttyUSB0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare)
> > started...
> > NM: <info>  Activation (ttyUSB0) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) complete.
> > NM: <WARN>  stage1_prepare_done(): GSM modem connection failed: (32)
> > Sending command failed: device is not enabled
> > NM: <info>  (ttyUSB0): device state change: 4 -> 9 (reason 1)
> > NM: <info>  Marking connection 'bouyguestel' invalid.
> > NM: <info>  Activation (ttyUSB0) failed.
> > NM: <info>  (ttyUSB0): device state change: 9 -> 3 (reason 0)
> > NM: <info>  (ttyUSB0): deactivating device (reason: 0).
> >
> > And lsof confirms that modem-manager has no ttyUSB opened.
> > It seems that a modem-manager restart or a simple AT command each 30
> > minutes is efficient to keep connection alive but I prefer correct cause
> > than consequence. It could help me to know the reason (and the answer?)
> > of that 30 minutes timeout, and where it comes from (3Gkey,ehci,mm,nm?).
> I use the e180 at openSUSE 11.3 RC2, and found after exactly 10
> minutes, it disconnects, when connect it again, it works fine.
> Provide more modem-manager debug maybe helpful.
> # killall -TERM NetworkManager
> # killall -TERM modem-manager
> # modem-manager --debug
> In another start the NetworkManager

I hadn't heard of this before, but it might be the case that some
firmware (or the network, either one) terminates the connection after a
certain period of inactivity to avoid taking up radio slots and
resources.  Perhaps that's what's happening here?  Does starting a "ping
-i 10 4.2.2.1" in a termianl and doing nothing else make the connection
hold for longer than 10 mintues?

Dan