u-blox R410M modem (QMI) configuration with modern Network-manager

[Tim Harvey]

On Fri, Nov 30, 2018 at 3:12 AM Aleksander Morgado
<aleksander at aleksander.es> wrote:
>
> Hey,
>
> > I'm trying to use a u-blox QMI R410M with network manager on Ubuntu
> > bionic witht he following which works fine on Ubuntu xenial:
> >
> > # nmcli connection add type gsm ifname cdc-wdm0 con-name mymodem apn $APN
> > # nmcli connection up id mymodem
> >
> > The modem's QMI interface is indeed /dev/cdc-wdm0, my APN is correct,
> > and I can connect just fine using mmcli or qmicli directly.
> >
> > On Xenial with network-manager-1.2.6 this works fine but on Bionic
> > with network-manager-1.10.6 this results in 'Error: Connection
> > activation failed: No suitable device found for this connection.'.
> >
> > I'm thinking the connection configuration syntax has likely changed
> > I'm I'm simply using the wrong syntax?
> >
> > Note that I'm using libqmi-1.20.2 and modemmanager-1.8.2 from
> > Aleksander's Ubuntu PPA's in both cases.
> >
>
> I'm not totally sure what might have changed in NM, but have you tried
> creating the connection *without ifname*?
> You can have "gsm" connection settings not bound any interface, NM
> will try to find a suitable device when connecting.
>

hmm... I wonder if that's not available until a newer version of NM?

root at bionic-newport:~# nmcli --version
nmcli tool, version 1.10.6
root at bionic-newport:~# nmcli connection add type gsm con-name mymodem apn $APN
Error: 'ifname' argument is required.

I've always thought the 'gsm' and 'cdma' types are a bit outdated for
modern LTE modems but it looks like that is what your supposed to
continue using according to the NM docs.

I wonder if there is something wrong with NM here as it doesn't even
seem to be even managing my wired connections:
root at bionic-newport:~# ifconfig
eth0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 172.24.25.23  netmask 255.240.0.0  broadcast 172.24.255.255
        inet6 fe80::2d0:12ff:fe0f:f583  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        ether 00:d0:12:0f:f5:83  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 66096  bytes 18460509 (18.4 MB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 3726  bytes 299073 (299.0 KB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 65536
        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0
        inet6 ::1  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x10<host>
        loop  txqueuelen 1000  (Local Loopback)
        RX packets 58  bytes 5562 (5.5 KB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 58  bytes 5562 (5.5 KB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

root at bionic-newport:~# cat /etc/network/interfaces
# ifupdown has been replaced by netplan(5) on this system.  See
# /etc/netplan for current configuration.
# To re-enable ifupdown on this system, you can run:
#    sudo apt install ifupdown
allow-hotplug eth0
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

root at bionic-newport:~# nmcli device status
DEVICE    TYPE      STATE      CONNECTION
can0      can       unmanaged  --
eth0      ethernet  unmanaged  --
eth1      ethernet  unmanaged  --
eth2      ethernet  unmanaged  --
eth3      ethernet  unmanaged  --
eth4      ethernet  unmanaged  --
lo        loopback  unmanaged  --
cdc-wdm0  modem     unmanaged  --

Instead on xenial I get:
root at xenial-newport:~# nmcli --version
nmcli tool, version 1.2.6
root at xenial-newport:~# nmcli device status
DEVICE    TYPE      STATE         CONNECTION
eth4      ethernet  connected     Wired connection 1
cdc-wdm0  modem     disconnected  --
eth1      ethernet  unavailable   --
eth2      ethernet  unavailable   --
eth3      ethernet  unavailable   --
can0      can       unmanaged     --
eth0      ethernet  unmanaged     --
lo        loopback  unmanaged     --

By the way, thank you again for your modemmanager PPA's, they are
doing wonders for us ARM/ARM64 users!

Regards,

Tim