Identifying mobile phones as modems

[Dan Williams]

On Wed, 2008-03-12 at 14:34 +0100, Patryk Zawadzki wrote:
> 2008/3/12 PEDRO MACANAS VALVERDE <macanas_ped at gva.es>:
> 
> First, please stop posting uninformed wishes to technical mailing
> list. You've been politely asked not to do so on a number of mailing
> lists. Second, quote properly and send messages as plain text.
> 
> > >Keep in mind that there are more cables (rs232 converters) to connect
> > > Nokia (and probably not only) phones. We have collected more
> > > information at http://wiki.gnokii.org/index.php/Cables
> > I would add gnokii to NetworkManager and make it the HAL/freedesktop
> > standard for network, modem and phone management.
> 
> NetworkManager is... a _network_ manager. Please note it is not called
> RandomStuffManager nor EverythingManager. Its job is to manager
> network connections over a number of devices marked as suited for such
> task. HAL is the source of information and the devices need to be
> marked as either ethernet, 802.11, modem or any other networkable type
> there, in HAL.
> 
> > >And one more thing. If it is about automatic starting NetworkManager
> > > when the phone gets connected and it will make all other apps unusable
> > > (because port being in use) I don't think it is a good idea. If it
> > > will let other apps to connect anyway, that's fine.
> > I agree. We would try the last option ( automatic starting without make all
> > other apps unusable).
> 
> Who is "we?" That does not add anything to the discussion.
> 
> A proper solution would require NetworkManager to ignore any serial
> devices until the user specifically asks it for a connection. That
> could actually be a good thing for places where you are charged for
> the connection time or data transferred.

This is what currently happens with NetworkManager.  The whole point of
adding this stuff to HAL was so that NM wouldn't have to attach to the
serial port and probe the device to figure out what type of command set
it supported.

NetworkManager will not use the serial device unless (a) the user
chooses it from the menu, or (b) the user has marked a mobile broadband
connection as "autoconnect".

Dan

> > >And it was one of my goals to allow various applications to connect to
> > > the phone simultanously through some abstract layer (remember phone
> > > utopia?).
> > This can be HAL.
> 
> Sure, it could also be GTK+ or maybe even Xorg. HAL is a hardware
> abstraction layer that is supposed to provide mere mortals (with uids
> > 0) with information about available devices. It is not a junkyard
> nor a hardware proxy (nor a sound mixer nor a package manager nor most
> of the things you usually end up asking for).
> 
> Please keep the lists clean. Do not post for the sake of posting. "Me
> too" from a non-programmer is just noise.
>