DSS usage

[Bjørn Mork]

Dmytro Milinevskyy <dmilinevskyy at sequans.com> writes:

> Hi Bjørn,
>
> I've already started to work on a concept of DSS through char dev.
> In the attachment you can find the first trial. 
> It's not extremely stable version but I can exchange data between the host and the device
> even if the main wwan interface is down. The DSS channel is registered as a misc device.
>
> There are several points which so far I don't know how to implement correctly:
> 1. how to publish/delete new DSS channel? Via ioctl for cdc-wdmXX device or via NL msg. Honestly I would prefer to use NL.
> 2. what is the best way to destroy DSS channels if MBIM device goes offline(i.e. it's being unbound). 
>    I'm afraid that I can't sleep in this context to wait for all DSS users to finish with the cleanup
> 3. there's a limitation on the number of misc devices in the system since it uses same major index. 
>    Don't know whether it's a big limitation though.
>
> The attached patches are just for the review, don't try them at home ;).

Ah, nice. You have been active :-)

I must say that this looks a lot better than my earlier experiments.

BUT...  It's a lot of code, and it will be much more when finished.  And
most of it is really just reimplementing a task which is done perfectly
well in userspace today.  Regarding the DSS publish/delete, I agree:
either ioctl or NL, and preferably NL.  But you are just replacing one
odd userspace API with another.  The DSS tools will sill have to be very
aware of the kernel API exported by the MBIM driver.

In short: I don't think moving the vlan => tty conversion into the
kernel is going to be an improvement. If it can be done in userspace,
then do it in userspace.

The ability for usbnet to receive data when the interface is down is
interesting. That is certainly useful.  But it has a major downside:
You loose the ability to stop reception.  Maybe this can be fixed? If
there are no IP sessions and no DSS sessions, then you really do not
want usbnet running.

This code is also going to be sold in to the usbnet maintainers.  I
suggest getting some comments from Oliver Neukum before putting too much
work into it.

I hope I am not coming out too negative here.  If you can make this fly,
then I have no real objections.  But I think there is a lot of work
remaining and I'm just not sure it's worth it.


Bjørn