Mobian 'HotSpot"

[bcnaz]

 
I have the Mobian August 15th nightly running from the sd card on one of my PMOS Convergent phones.

The cellular data is working okay,  but I cannot seem to get the Hotspot to turn on...  ?

I do not know if that is a carrier problem,  or a software problem.    BUT it Did Work the last time I tried it..?

I do not use data very often on my Pine phone,  and

 *   I do not remember how long ago it was the last time I used the hotspot,   

                on this phone, it is still the same carrier as when it did work,  'Pure Talk',  they are an MVNO of AT&T.

[MtnSk8]

I would first use network connections manager to create a new wifi connection with "hotspot" selected as the "mode".

In the 3dot menu in gnome's wi-fi settings, rather than selecting "Turn on wifi hotspot" select instead "connect to hidden network" and find/select your new hotspot connection profile in the drop down.

The carrier should not be a factor until the hotspot is connected and trying to pass remote traffic through the modem. (BTW: Use vpn to avoid hotspot blocking or limitations by the carrier). I hope that helps.

(side note: connecting the PP w/mobian to your laptop with a usbc-to-usb-a cable should automatically establish an ethernet connection. For me on a PBP the usb tethering "just works" and I rarely use the hotspot any more)

Good luck!

[bcnaz]

Turns out it was a carrier issue on both  carriers.

I spent a long time talking to an AT&T rep.  he "reset"  something on my account and now  "data and hot spot work on my daily driver".

Later I talked to a rep. at Pure Talk and it turned out you just need to ask them to turn on your hot spot capability,  it is off by default.
  >  My "test" phones are on Pure Talk  <

[lsitongia]

Hope you don't mind my tagging onto this thread.

I'm running bookworm unstable and am trying the hotspot for the first time. I have Google FI and I know the hotspotting works because I've used this SIM card in other phones. I've tried directly starting the hotspot and the hidden wifi network method describe here. My Ubuntu laptop connects to the hotspot, but it doesn't get an Internet connection (the wifi glyph has a "?" in it). I've looked at the syslog on my laptop and don't see anything glaringly bad, in my naive view. Nothing is logged in any of the files in /var/log in the phone.

Any ideas of what could be wrong? Does anyone have a similar setup?

Thank you.

---

BTW, is USB tethering supposed to work? I've tried that, and the phone may be getting to the same state. The network manager on my laptop shows the USB network connection, it has an IP address. I have it 8.8.8.8 for DNS, just in case. Turned off wifi on phone. No Internet connection. Maybe this is a problem in bookworm unstable?

[bcnaz]

I have found it to work on most of the Mobian/Bookworm nightly releases, occasionally there is a 'fault' in ''A nightly release'',
but they usually have it fixed by the next nightly release.
I have done a few nightly reviews on the thread 'Bookworm' * My Tests are all "Out of the Box" tests.
Hot spot usually just works with just the basics set up.
Using Pure Talk, you must call customer service and ask them to turn on 'Hot Spot' service as it is off by default, but no extra charge for the service.

I have not tried tethering myself yet, but elsewhere on this forum I have read that it worked just by 'hooking it up' No set-up needed.
( I have no idea if tethering requires hot spot privileges from the carrier.? )

* (I have 'connected' using hot spot on Phosh armArch, and Phosh/Manjaro also, but I have not done nearly as much testing on those OSes.)

*** I assume that data is working on the phone before you try to share the data ?

[biketool]

Turns out it was a carrier issue on both  carriers.

I spent a long time talking to an AT&T rep.  he "reset"  something on my account and now  "data and hot spot work on my daily driver".

Later I talked to a rep. at Pure Talk and it turned out you just need to ask them to turn on your hot spot capability,  it is off by default.
  >  My "test" phones are on Pure Talk  <

Wait...
How can a mobile service operator have any effect on hotspot?
This is an app internal to the phone doing some IP tables stuff to route data through what could be thought of as like a VPN or IP tunnel, you could think of the NAT as using data in the exact same way as a web browser or any other app then redirecting it once it has split it out to the NAT clients. 
I was under the impression that operator controlled hotspot was only possible with phones that had a custom OS controlled by the mobile service provider so they could have a lock on and charge extra for hotspot data.
Anything else would be some voodoo magic in an otherwise rational FOSS world with IP tables routing.
The only thing I can think of is if they are doing packet inspection and see/filter out NAT in the packets, a VPN or a SSH tunnel should fix that then.

[bcnaz]

I am not a radio/telephone professional.

but there is even a note on the Pure Talk website, "default for all phones except iphones is Hot Spot turned off".

No extra charge to turn on the hot spot, but you must request it.

Just sharing real time experiences, what happens, and how I make it go.

[biketool]

I am not a radio/telephone professional.

but there is even a note on the Pure Talk website,  "default for all phones except iphones is Hot Spot turned off".

No extra charge to turn on the hot spot,  but you must request it.

Just sharing real time experiences,  what happens, and how I make it go.

I appreciate your report, we all have our areas of expertise, your contribution is important.
Since they can toggle a 'switch' I am pretty sure it is deep packet inspection, I would not use this data provider without either a scripted to run at network connection SSH tunnel to a server I had control of or a VPN provided by a privacy reputation VPN service(both encrypt all packets so they can NOT be inspected by service providers).  I feel like your cellular data service is tipping their hand and reminding us that we should be expecting and planning countermeasures for this common bad behavior like deep packet inspection and blocking legitimate data by our service providers.

[TRS-80]

As someone who played cat and mouse with telcos for many years not wanting to be gouged extra for a feature which was built into the OS ("hotspot/tethering") I can tell you it doesn't need to be anything fancy like DPI.  I recall one case where (T-Mobile I think?) were just looking at the TTL hop count on the packets coming on to their network, one less hop and they assumed the packets to be coming from a tethered device.  So the workaround in that case was to simply set TTL to +1 on your devices.   

I do tether a lot recently and it works mostly but the data connection keeps dropping out.  I am not on Bookworm yet though, my hope is that continued software development of the modem stack will improve reliability.