need my usb tethering back

[HLing]

once more my pinephone had come to that sweet spot where after a recent update the battery consumption improved noticeably. The cellular modem (and therefore mobile data still dropped off and disappeared from time to time)  Alas, after june 30th upgrade (uname -a tells me it's the May 31, 2021's 5.10 kernel), my trusted and essential usb tethering stopped working. I get that perhaps not many people need this option, but at this moment in time i urgently need that function to be solid. i don't need encryption. (Last time i had this issue after upgrading to 5.11 kernel.. and i had to reinstall.)Can someone walk me through how to back track without re-installing? Thank you!

[HLing]

so, it was a stressful day as I tried various ways to get USB tethering to work with the 5.10 kernel from May 31, 2021. It seems to be a kernel upgrade danger. I tried to go back to the May 16 2021 image but ran into an new problem of having none of the software necessary to grow the f2fs file system, leaving me with a few MB of space that isn't enough to get online much less to install anything new. So, then, at midnight I had to go back to the Feb 1, 2021 image. after which the ext4 partition is easily expanded to include the whole 12G.  It once again gets my laptop online no fussing no questions asked.
Just now I update and upgraded, 354 packages but a few held back (one of which is another 5.10 linux kernel image). I am still ok with the USB tethering. My question now is, do I just avoid dist-upgrade to avoid breaking the USB Tethering?  I know it's not on most people's priority and so it does not get remedied.  I have,  at midnight, wondered if I could try Archlinux,  it would hatve been a totally new language that I have not had time and resource to learn on short notice.   Eventually though, is it something I have to do?
 
Also, what does one use to deal with f2fs file system?

[biketool]

USB and Bluetooth networking is important and for personal users of higher priority than WiFi which is in many cases more for sharing your Internet connection with friends.  The downside to using WiFi over USB or Bluetooth is WiFi wastes far more amp/hours per Mb of data transferred.  Since we are mobile and using a battery it is a really big deal to save those battery watt/hours.  
PAN bluetooth network is reasonably easy to set up http://wiki.maemo.org/Bluetooth_PAN though many people want a GUI the N900 example is still be limited to paired computers as far as access control as it is a Personal Area Network(PAN).
Every interface should easily be configured to be the host, there are situations where a user might even insert a USB Ethernet dongle and run a whole network off of a pinephone.

[guenther]

You could try to upgrade everything and then switch to the previous kernel 5.9. This is what I did on my PineTab because a "kworker" process eating up 100% cpu in kernel 5.10. I don't know how this affect usb tethering in any way but I guess it should work again...

[HLing]

You could try to upgrade everything and then switch to the previous kernel 5.9. This is what I did on my PineTab because a "kworker" process eating up 100% cpu in kernel 5.10. I don't know how this affect usb tethering in any way but I guess it should work again...

Guenther, I was hoping there was a way as you described.  could you point me to how you did it? I would not need to go back to 5.9, just the Jan version of 5.10.  Just now, I did another dist-upgrade, after seeing that 15 packages were being held back if i only did the plain upgrade. (I'm a glutton for punishment).  I still wanted to know if it was the May 31 kernel that was the real culprit or if it was something else since I thought I saw something along the line of "encryption" the last time I updated but not this time.  I will find out when I get home and try to get my laptop online via USB tethering tonight.

---

USB and Bluetooth networking is important and for personal users of higher priority than WiFi which is in many cases more for sharing your Internet connection with friends.  The downside to using WiFi over USB or Bluetooth is WiFi wastes far more amp/hours per Mb of data transferred.  Since we are mobile and using a battery it is a really big deal to save those battery watt/hours.  
PAN bluetooth network is reasonably easy to set up http://wiki.maemo.org/Bluetooth_PAN though many people want a GUI the N900 example is still be limited to paired computers as far as access control as it is a Personal Area Network(PAN).
Every interface should easily be configured to be the host, there are situations where a user might even insert a USB Ethernet dongle and run a whole network off of a pinephone.

Biketool, it's nice to see the maemo site again, as I have only skirted the forum when i had the nokia n9. (still have, just can't keep up with the new cell frequencies).  I know I could use wifi or bluetooth to get my laptop online, but would really prefer the USB tethering where I would be charging my pinephone at the same time, instead of using up its battery....

[guenther]

Code:

sudo u-boot-update
sudo nano /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf

You will find some "labels" with kernel path. Edit the line "default l0" to your choice, eg. "default l1". Save and reboot.

Check running kernel with

Code:

uname -r

Keep in mind if you do a mistake it may not boot. In that case you could boot "jumpdrive" and edit the "extlinux.conf" on a different computer.

[HLing]

Code:

sudo u-boot-update
sudo nano /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf

You will find some "labels" with kernel path. Edit the line "default l0" to your choice, eg. "default l1". Save and reboot.

Check running kernel with

Code:

uname -r

Keep in mind if you do a mistake it may not boot. In that case you could boot "jumpdrive" and edit the "extlinux.conf" on a different computer.

Thanks, Quenther.  I don't know what to edit it to.  I don't need to roll back to Kernel 5.9; would just like to have the result of  "uname -a "  be back to:
Linux mobian 5.10-sunxi64 #2 SMP PREEMPT Tues Jan 12 09:55:56 UTC 2021 aarch 64 GNU/Linux.  and not the present one, which is
Linux mobian 5.10-sunxi64 #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon May 31 21:46:30 UTC 2021 aarch 64 GNU/Linux

Is that possible? Otherwise I will be once again getting my Jumpdrive out again...

[guenther]

I don't know. If you don't want to switch to 5.9, IMHO you could only flash an image from the date you guess it's working...

[biketool]

I am curious how much of this scripting needs to be changed to add PAN AP capacity to Mobian?
http://wiki.maemo.org/Bluetooth_PAN

Code:

Install the iptables package:

apt-get install iptables

create the following 2 files:

/etc/udev/rules.d/98-bnep0.rules:

ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="net",  KERNEL=="bnep0", RUN+="/etc/udev/bluenet.sh"
ACTION=="remove", SUBSYSTEM=="net",  KERNEL=="bnep0", RUN+="/etc/udev/bluenet.sh"

/etc/udev/bluenet.sh:

#! /bin/sh
if [ $ACTION = "add" ]; then
    echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
    iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING ! -o lo -j MASQUERADE
    ifconfig bnep0 192.168.3.1
    ifconfig bnep0 up
    /usr/sbin/dnsmasq -I lo -z -a 192.168.3.1 -F 192.168.3.64,192.168.3.127 -x /var/run/dnsmasq.pid.bnep0
else
    iptables -t nat -D POSTROUTING ! -o lo -j MASQUERADE
    if [ -f /var/run/dnsmasq.pid.bnep0 ]; then
        DNSMASQ_PID=`cat /var/run/dnsmasq.pid.bnep0`
        rm -f /var/run/dnsmasq.pid.bnep0
        kill $DNSMASQ_PID
       fi
fi

then set /etc/udev/bluenet.sh as executible:

chmod +x /etc/udev/bluenet.sh

I have been using PAN for my laptop and tablet when mobile for many years and it works great, almost as power efficient as USB and far better than WiFi on a mobile battery.
I did notice we can already join a bluetooth PAN as a client from Advanced Networking settings.

[ragreenburg]

Did you ever find a solution to this? I just got a usb tether the other day and it hasn't worked with the three mice I've tried it with and it seems like I have the same kernel as you so I am in a similar position.