ModemManager vs. modems

The last days I worked on porting newer versions of ModemManager (MM) and NetworkManager (NM) to SLE11-SP1. Basically, the NM version from openSUSE 11.2 plus some patches and the latest MM release v0.4 are working now, but that's not the point of this posting.

It was the first time I touched the code of these tools. My expectation was that ModemManager should contain all modem related code and provide a DBus interface for NM to handle all the networking. The first issue I tested was using a mobile (GSM) via USB. It worked. Also UMTS/CDMA devices should work. But to my surprise ModemManager don't support plain modems (simple old and slow modems like a serial 56k modem) at all. Or did I miss something?

So why is this daemon called ModemManager if there is no modem support? It's all about WWAN devices and not modems. Not that this project is completely new, the first git commit is from July 2008.

If this should be a manager for modems, it should IMO support all kinds of modems like e.g. serial or PCMCIA modems, cable or (A)DSL modems and WWAN devices. Otherwise rename it to WwanManager (or should it be WWANManager?) for example!

Another point that's absurd to me: All the PPPoE handling (as e.g. used for DSL modems) is still part of NetworkManager. And AFAICS the modem dialup support is still covered by pppd and under GNOME by gnome-ppp. It would make much more sense to do all the PPP handling in one place. Until now I assumed NM to be the central place to handle network, but the last days disabused me. The current situation is far far away from being reasonable.

Tech Tags: ModemManager Network

Hacking osc (2)

The last days I fixed again some issues in osc. This time it was about the 'osc results' options:

• fixed 'osc results -a/-r' if you call it from a package directory [1]
• fixed and enabled 'osc results -a/-r' also for project directories to be able to filter the output for architecture(s) and/or repo(s) (especially since it can be a long list) [2]
  

Since I have now commit rights at the osc git repo: it should be in the next release.

Tech Tags: Patches SUSE

Hacking osc

Last month I found some time to take a look at osc to fix issues and add some stuff I was missing since I have to work with build.opensuse.org and the SUSE internal buildservice (e.g. for updates and maintenance of our enterprise products).

Yes, I know it's some weeks old and now integrated, but anyway. Here is what I've done:

• added new 'osc getbinaries REPOSITORY' to checkout the RPMs for all architectures, including the source RPMs, into subdirectories [here]
  
• fix 'osc my' to get the apiurl from checked out packages if possible [here]
  
• make sure that global option -A always works too in a directory with a checked out package [here]
  
• add run_pager() and make osc log/diff work like git log/diff (call less by default to display the result of diff) [here]
  
• fixed some close() statements and some other warnings [here]
  

Tech Tags: Patches SUSE