Re: connect to internet via android phone as usb-modem

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Wed, 2011-03-16 at 14:46 -0400, Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 3:08 PM, Sergio Monteiro Basto
> <sergio sergiomb no-ip org> wrote:
> > Hi, I found this page :
> > http://ubuntuguide.net/ubuntu-connect-to-internet-via-android-phone-as-usb-modem
> >
> > Have we something better ou easier with NewtworkManager , to do the same
> > functions ? : "connect to internet via android phone as usb-modem"
> >
> 
> If the version of Android you're running is recent enough, it should
> be as simple as going in settings and selecting Wireless and Networks,
> then Connection Sharing, and enabling connection sharing Via USB.
> 
> IIRC, this works starting with Android 2.0 (depending on the carriers
> though), but I may be wrong.

Mobile hotspot is clearly the better solution here, but for older
versions of android, if for some reason you can't run an XDA/Cyanogen
build, and you're using easytether, there may be some hope.  The problem
with easytether is that it's a closed-source blob on Linux and thus
there's no way to improve the interaction between it and NetworkManager
in the future.  We're stuck with whatever easytether decides it wants to
do today, and we have no recourse to improve it.

That said, the best way to go about this is likely to use udev scripts
to initially create the easytether0 interface, and then we could add
some custom code to NM to recognize the easytether0 interface as a
normal ethernet device and run DHCP on it.  That wouldn't be *too* hard,
probably < 30 lines of code.  It would involve using g_str_has_prefix()
looking for easytether in the nm-udev-manager.c code, and if so,
bypassing some of the udev /sysfs hierarchy checks that determine
hardware relationships and device attributes like driver and
description.  That's not something we should be doing for most "virtual"
network interfaces, but it's probably OK in the case of easytether.

Dan