Top-level (ppp) connection management over MM

[Aleksander Morgado]

On 08/02/17 16:55, colin.helliwell at ln-systems.com wrote:
> One thing I've picked up whilst reading about MM is that although it can set
> the modem into data mode, it doesn't take care of any of the PPP side of
> things - this is the responsibility of 'elsewhere'?  I'm trying to figure
> out whether there's anything off-the-shelf that can be used for this role?
> Presumably something that has the ability to control & monitor pppd, and
> also able to control and monitor the modem via MM.
> 
> Should I be looking to use MM with something like NetworkManager, or other
> [write my own]?  (I did look at Connman but that appears to need oFono,
> which I've found to be near-unusably undocumented - I suspect Intel open
> source the code, but not their docs..)
> 
>  
> 
> This is a headless system (is NetworkManager 'usable' like this?); the 3G
> ppp link is needed to be brought up/down depending on other system criteria
> e.g. if the Ethernet's broadband router, or even the ISP, falls over. I'd
> like something as light n simple as possible, albeit the system has udev,
> DBus and probably systemd.
> 
> Any recommendations.? Ta!

NetworkManager is the obvious choice, because it already has all the
integration required to make ModemManager work, and supports setting up
all 3 different connection methods that MM may require (PPP, static, dhcp).

If you only need one of those methods, though, you may find it easier to
just setup a script that runs mmcli --simple-connect and then launch PPP
on the interface specified in the bearer info (e.g. mmcli -b 0). Right
now using mmcli in scripts is not very friendly, though, as the output
it generates is pretty-printed for humans, not for machines, although it
isn't impossible to parse.

-- 
Aleksander
https://aleksander.es