restarting mobile broadband

[David L]

On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> David L wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I asked this question on the network manager
>> mailing list but didn't get answer, so I thought
>> I'd try here.
>>
>> I'm a newbie to NetworkManager and have a few
>> questions.  I have a verizon wireless pcmcia
>> card.  It is working with NetworkManager, but the
>> connection drops from time to time and doesn't
>> restart.  I have the "connect automatically"
>> configuration option set, and that seems to work
>> on startup.  But is doesn't reconnect automatically
>> when the connection dies.  So, here are my
>> questions:
>>
>> 1) Is there an option that I'm missing to tell it
>> to reconnect automatically?
>
> On the rare occasions when I have had drops, it seems to reconnect by itself
> but not instantly. There seems to be a delay before reconnect is attempted.

Hi Bill,

Somebody eventually responded to my original
post on the networkmanager list and said this
in response to my first question:

"Yeah, reconnect of a failed connection (as opposed to a
user-disconnected one) is definitely on the list.  I was planning on
doing some of the work for that in the 'inhibit' branch in git, so you
can track that there.  It won't be mobile-broadband-specific at first,
but the changes there will help out the mobile broadband stuff too."

Somebody asked a similar question about VPN
and the response was basically the same.

Nobody answered the other questions
(except you).


>
>> 2) Is there a command-line method to start
>> the connection so I can roll my own
>> reconnection script?
>> 3) Is there a way to reconnect a VPN
>> connection when the mobile broadband
>> connection is restarted?
>
> Not that I ever found.
>
>> 4) Is there a way to keep track of total bytes
>> transferred through a mobile broadband
>> connection over multiple sessions?  I'd
>> like to keep track of how close I'm getting
>> to the Verizon 5GB monthly limit.
>>
> Maybe, there is a statistics directory for the device in /sys, with a name
> like
>  /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.0/net/eth0/statistics/
> and a file called rx_bytes which may or may not run boot to boot rather than
> resetting with the connect. Do let me know if that's what you need, and good
> luck with the VPN. I find that if there are multiple access points NM
> doesn't even reliably remember which one I was using, so reconnect is
> reliable as long as the number of available APs is no more than one. That
> may only happen after suspend, rather than drop...

I do know about /proc/net/dev that has per session statistics,
but I was wondering if networkmanager had a way to accumulate
over multiple sessions.  I think the answer is no.

Cheers...

                    David