Re: [PATCH] Fix for Blueman modem being ignored

[Tore Anderson <tore fud no>]

I'm sorry to blow the dust off this old thread, but yesterday I ran into
the exact same problem as Nick Peskett did, and Google eventually led me
to this thread. Removing the check in questeion works, however, if
possible I'd like to run the distro version of NM rather than a patched one.

* Dan Williams

> On Tue, 2012-10-23 at 13:24 +0200, Aleksander Morgado wrote:
>
> > What could happen if we end up allowing bluetooth-based modems not being
> > grabbed by the NMDeviceBt and therefore created as plain NMDeviceModem
> > objects? As far as I can see, the bluetooth DUN settings required for
> > the modem to connect don't really have any bluetooth-specific stuff in
> > there, not sure why plain gsm/cdma modem settings aren't enough.
>
> We want the bluetooth information so we can actually show something
> useful in various user interfaces, like the name of the device, and
> possibly it's state at some point.  If we have the Bluetooth address,
> then NM creates the rfcomm port automatically for you when you start the
> DUN connection.  No need for something like Blueman to create it for
> you, and this also lets NM monitor the rfcomm device for events like
> bluetooth disconnections so we can provide better error handling, like
> "Your Phone is too far away" instead of "PPP disconnected" like we'd get
> if we only know about PPP failure on the rfcomm interface.
>
> Second, just creating an NMModem means there's no API/UI linkage between
> some device that NM knows about (your phone) and the thing that's being
> used for networking, which isn't very helpful to the user.  Which is one
> major reason why we require the Connection to be created (which
> typically happens when pairing), which in turn creates the NMDeviceBt
> what you see in the menu.  And since we know it's a Bluetooth device,
> and we know its name, you see the name you gave the phone, instead of
> "rfcomm0" which is completely unhelpful.
>
> Basically, the reason Blueman got created was because at the time there
> wasn't a great way to add/remove DUN connections via the GUI with the
> standard NM tools.  The way that was done was via the GNOME Bluetooth
> applet.  A year or so ago, the bluetooth applet got updated to show
> these options all the time, instead of just when pairing.  That
> basically replaces any additional functionality Blueman provided.

That's all well and good, I suppose - IFF you're using GNOME. I'm not,
and AFAIK Blueman is the only Bluetooth manager available to me (the
GNOME one doesn't even want to start when in my XFCE or LXDE DE sessions).

You're saying that NM will create the rfcomm port automatically if you
have the Bluetooth address. Is there some way I can configure the
Bluetooth address manually in NM, instead of requiring GNOME's Bluetooth
manager to supply it? Or am I simply SOL until Blueman starts doing the
same magic that the GNOME applet is?

-- 
Tore Anderson