[Kde-hardware-devel] Review Request: Adds tab with Mobile Broadband info (depends on ModemManager)

[Lamarque Vieira Souza]

Em Terça-feira 18 Maio 2010, Sebastian Kügler escreveu:
> Hi Lamarque,

	Hi,
 
> On Wednesday 19 May 2010 00:07:48 Lamarque Vieira Souza wrote:
> > 	Ok, now plasma applet connects me to the Internet with all three types
> > 
> > (wired, wireless and 3G), but it needs a lot of work:
> Good to see that the very basics work. I don't have the means to try here,
> so everything mobile broadband-related, I have to do blindly.
> 
> I don't have answers to all your questions, but I'll give some insight here
> and there, and maybe we can connect the dots and fix those issues.
> 
> One thing upfront, since that clarifies where certain problems are to be
> sought: KNM is a monolithic network manager client, it acquires an
> exclusive lock on NetworkManager's user settings service. The Plasmoid is
> a bit different, as in this case, we use a kded module to hold
> NetworkManager's user settings service, and commnunicate with this through
> DBus and the nmclient library you can find in libs/client.
> 
> That means that the equivalent to restarting knm would be unloading and
> reloading the kded module (see the scripts in tools/(un)load-module.sh).

	Reloading the module does solve the problem of plasma applet GUI not 
responding after NM restart, I had to restart plasma-desktop program 
altogether to make the GUI work again.
 
> I've just committed a change to not install knm's autostart file by
> default, but load the kded module instead, by the way. So by default, you
> get the Plasmoid now. The default Plasma layout will now also enable the
> NM Plasmoid in the notification area, this change went into trunk last
> weekend.

	Not working here. I have just ckecked out and compiled 
kdereview/networkmanagement and it does not load the module automatically. I 
added a .desktop file in ~/.config/autostart to make it load at login.
 
> > . auto-connect works for wired and wireless, but for 3G it only works if
> > the modem has already been "initialized" (radio turned on and registered
> > to operator network). 3G modems can be slow to initialize (my MD300 can
> > take 15 seconds to turn radio on after I hook it up to USB port plus more
> > 15s to register to operator network, sometimes even more than that). It
> > seems plasma applet does not wait for it to initialize and auto-connect
> > does not work. To force it to connect I had to disable networking, which
> > disconnects wired and wireless connections, and enable networking again.
> 
> If it works with knm, then it's probably a bug in the kded module.

	I have never tested this with knm, but problably it will not work too 
since this is a problem with ModemManager or NM giving up too soon. wvdial 
also does not connect at first try. Only in the second or third try wvdial 
finally succeed, but Modemmanager tries only once, gives up and marks the 
connection as "invalid" so I cannot do a second try. To make things even worse 
I had to reconnect my modem to USB port after one successfull connection to 
make another connection, this seems a problem with cdc_ether driver (default 
in ModemManager) since with cdc_acm driver (the wvdial driver) I can reconnect 
at will, but that is not a KDE problem.
 
> > . some time ago I did a test with wvdial with my cell phone and if I
> > issue the AT +CFUN=1 command (turn radio on) it does the contrary, it
> > disables radio and I have to reboot my phone to get it working again,
> > even for voice call. ModemManager always issue this command when
> > connecting, that is another reason I do not use auto-connect for 3G
> > here, so please make it possible to connect manually or I will have to
> > reboot my cell phone everytime I hook it to my notebook.
> 
> Is that a modem manager bug?

	I think it is a problem in my phone's firmware. Issuing AT +CFUN=1 is the 
standard command to activate radio in all 3G modems, since radio is already on 
in my cell phone it should does nothing and not disabling the radio, which is 
the command AT +CFUN=4 by the way. Unfortunately Samsung has really bad 
support for my Omnia HD phone (i8910). Several modders all there do a better 
job at solving problems in i8910 than Samsung does.
 
> > . connecting manually is very important to me because I have a 3G modem
> > and a cell phone, both using chips from the same operator, I do it this
> > way because voice call using 3G chip is much more expensive than using
> > the other chip (about more than 8 times more expensive, one more wierd
> > thing about brazilian telephone operators). So, if I hook up my cell
> > phone plasma applet will automatically connects me to 3G and my cell
> > phone bill will increase like hell until I notice it. Ok it will not
> > because the problem mentioned before, but if that problem did not
> > existed this one would happen. The problem below makes things a little
> > worse since plasma applet does not notifies me I am connected.
> 
> If you've set up a 3G connection (and not set it to connect automatically)
> it will show up in the list on the right, and clicking on it means you
> connect. You can use the disconnect button to, well disconnect. In theory,
> of course, so that would be the intended behaviour. :)

	The disable button works as expected if the connection is *not* set to 
auto-connect. If it is set to auto-connect clicking on disable makes the 
connection reconnect, which with my MD300 modem means the connection will 
always fail because of the cdc_ether problem I described above. With wireless 
clicking on disable makes the connection reconnects, but I would like it to 
just disable the connection instead of reconnect.
 
> > . plasma applet does not emmit any notification at all as far as I can
> > see. There are entries in bugs.kde.org with people asking for
> > notifications when a connection has been made or closed
> > (https://bugs.kde.org/204356). I implemented this feature some weeks ago
> > for knm and I think it is quite useful.
> 
> The Plasma applet is not responsible for notifications, those should be
> done by the kded module, and configured in the KCM (which is also
> reachable via the plasmoid's config dialog). A missing feature / bug
> nevertheless, of course.

	I think there is no button to launch the notification configuration in 
the plasmoid's config dialog, only for "connections" and "other" 
configurations. I far as I know the notification infra-structure is shared 
between the plasmoid and knm, right? I have already setup the notifications in 
system settings to work with knm, so they should work with plasmoid too, 
right? It sems kded module does not use ./libs/service/notificationmanager.*
 
> > . when NM restarts the applet does not recognise NM anymore, but the kded
> > modules still works and auto-connects in background. Knm has this problem
> > too and as far as I could investigate this problem
> > (https://bugs.kde.org/233469) some dbus signals are not reaching the
> > slots. I created a hack to restart knm and it seems to workaround the
> > problem in knm, but I do not know how to restart plasma applet. I think
> > this is a annyoing bug, if someone could help investigate this or make my
> > hack work with plasma applet I appreciate it. As a test I tried to remove
> > and re-add plasma applet from notification tray but it still does not
> > recognise NM is running. Even removing the whole notification tray did
> > not do the trick.
> 
> First thing to try is reloading the kded module:
> 
> qdbus org.kde.kded /kded unloadModule networkmanagement
> qdbus org.kde.kded /kded loadModule networkmanagement

	It did not work :-(
 
> > . there are some inconsistencies in the interface. The "Not Available"
> > entry below the Mobile Broadband interface for instance, when I click on
> > it it just show me the details about the last connection I had clicked
> > (eth0, eth1, or usb0 in my case), if it is "not available" it should do
> > nothing when I click on in, right? The "Show more"  button does nothing
> > here.
> 
> I've committed a fix for that two or three hours ago already. :-)

	Yes, the "Not Available" button is gone now.
 
	Two other problems I have just found: 1. the plasmoid layout gets messed 
up if I go to one of the interface detail windows because the traffic monitor 
is too big for the plasmoid window. 2. The "back" button in interface details 
does not work anymore, I can click on it but it does nothing.

	Is there any easy way to increase applet window? Mousing over the upper-
left corner changes mouse cursor as if it would let me resize the window but 
dragging it does not nothing. By the way, the battery plasmoid also act like 
that (mouse over changes cursor but does not resize) the difference is that it 
is the upper-right corner that changes cursor shape. All plasmoids should use 
only one corner (left or right) to resize window, right? :-)

-- 
Lamarque V. Souza
http://www.geographicguide.com/brazil.htm
Linux User #57137 - http://counter.li.org/
http://www.kde-mg.org