modem no carrier message

[mouffa]

yes you can do many things with ofono, every service has got some configuration files which in the case of Plasma should be updated manually as shown in the manual, Phosh probably uses scripts and configures both the modem and the network interface automatically, I will research it in order to port it to Plasma, the ability to work with D-Bus seems to be indispensable for every Pinephone user

Plasma should be considered experimental, if you use Phosh you will notice the difference, everything just works, Firefox has been ported from android and accepts add-ons, excellent terminal emulator and many other features

the guide is very extensive and covers most the features Pinephone has, very helpful and comprehensive for anyone

now I will explore the17-distro image, I am mostly interested in SailfishOS

http://xnux.eu/p-boot-demo/

[Rainer]

Hi again, I took your advice and installed phosh beta 10. I had to use the etcher program to flash to sd card. It definitely feels more stable in the short time I've used it but I have run into some 'silly' problems like where is the send button on the sms default program? Anyhow, I'll find the proper forum to address this. And thanks again.

[mouffa]

you should be able to do it with the dd command, it's the most fundamental method that works everywhere, in the meantime I tried the latest Manjaro Plasma from here and it seems to work like Phosh, there must be some problem with the preinstalled Manjaro Beta

https://github.com/manjaro-pinephone/pla.../releases/

Pinephone is definitely not a daily driver and this is mostly due to its old hardware, especially the Mali GPU, rather than the development phase of its software, but it is very interesting to explore it like a real Linux machine

[mouffa]

At last I made it work on Plasma. I hope you can reproduce the result but also try to install a new image of Manjaro Plasma because the preinstalled had many problems.

I was based on the guide and I managed to do it completely through qdbus without the need to edit any files, so it is essential to understand the D-Bus technology. If qdbus is not installed open Discover and install the Qt QDBusViewer package.

As we have mentioned the applications and the services communicate through D-Bus so every app/service registers itself with a name and defines variables and operations that can be performed by talking to the app/service through D-Bus.

You can search the apps by typing qdbus and the services by typing

qdbus --system

So searching the system you'll find an entry org.ofono

With

qdbus --system org.ofono

you'll get the devices registered by ofono that is /bluetooth and /quectelqmi_0 that is a Quectel modem talking through the QMI interface with the name 0(zero), under each device you get some structures that can be configured like /quectelqmi_0/context1  and /quectelqmi_0/operators

qdbus --system org.ofono /quectelqmi_0/context1

will show you the possible operations that can be performed with the context. You may have more contexts, in fact I think you will need one more context for MMS so if it is not there you will have to create it

qdbus --system org.ofono /quectelqmi_0

you get ALL the operations that can be performed on the modem which are many and very interesting

What worked for me was to set up the context and reboot the phone because I wasn't able to activate the context by restarting services but I believe it can be done through qdbus because there are commands having to do with the activation of the context

In fact the only thing I needed to configure was the APN and the Authentication though I changed the Name too

So as it is done in the guide you first check the context

qdbus --system org.ofono /quectelqmi_0/context1 org.ofono.ConnectionContext.GetProperties

Then you set the variables

qdbus --system org.ofono /quectelqmi_0/context1 org.ofono.ConnectionContext.SetProperty AccessPointName attach.telus.com

qdbus --system org.ofono /quectelqmi_0/context1 org.ofono.ConnectionContext.SetProperty Authentication none

qdbus --system org.ofono /quectelqmi_0/context1 org.ofono.ConnectionContext.SetProperty Name Telus

The Protocol should be IP and the Type should be Internet, Username and Password should be empty, I don't know how many contexts you'll find and how many entries in the context and with what pre-configured values

After the reboot much more properties will appear like DNS, IP Address etc, then the NetworkManager will automatically configure the wwan0 interface so most of the tricks that are performed in the guide are not necessary, maybe all these steps were valid for PostmarketOS.

According to the guide you need one more context for the MMS with APN sp.koodo.com and Type mms

Try to do it and use the correct configuration from Koodo website and tell me if it works for you too.

---

I just figured out that the context is activated if you turn on and off one or two times the mobile data from the button in the panel that appears if you swipe downwards from the top of the screen, it seems that the button performs all the necessary operations to reset the mobile internet connection

[mouffa]

The latest news is that the configuration survives even the battery removal so it seems that it is stored either in the flash memory of the modem or in some configuration files though I wasn't able to locate the configuration files referred in the guide.

Indeed turning off and on the mobile data the context is activated and the mobile data signal strength icon goes from blue to gray with no other indication, I am sure that I had seen somewhere some settings for the icon but I can't recall it.

If for some reason the modem is off like in case you didn't enter the pin after booting the phone then do the following

ofonoctl poweron
ofonoctl online

qdbus --system org.ofono /quectelqmi_0 org.ofono.SimManager.EnterPin pin your_pin

Note that the modem may not always be /quectelqmi_0 but may be /quectelqmi_1, it will be printed after the ofono commands


I tried

qdbus --system org.ofono /quectelqmi_0 org.ofono.AllowedAccessPoints.GetAllowedAccessPoints

but it says that operation failed

A very interesting command is

qdbus --system org.ofono /quectelqmi_0 org.ofono.Modem.GetProperties

and the similar NetworkMonitor commands for getting information about your cell or the other cell around you

I also tried to set up the LTE because my operator gives me automatically UMTS data support but after getting the LTE properties again nothing changes like in the case of the context that it is populated with new parametres, maybe a new context is needed

qdbus --system org.ofono /quectelqmi_0 org.ofono.LongTermEvolution.GetProperties
qdbus --system org.ofono /quectelqmi_0 org.ofono.LongTermEvolution.SetProperty DefaultAccessPointName attach.telus.com

so now the Quectel beast is under control and there is much more research to be done with ofono and DBus

[mouffa]

I try to turn off the modem to achieve a flight mode but the ofono commands won't do the job, so I discovered the following procedure

Turn off the modem with a Quectel specific AT command, it even disappears from the USB Bus, try lsusb

echo at+qpowd=1 | sudo atinout - /dev/EG25.MODEM -

that is send the Quectel Power Down command with parametre 1(Normal power off, for emergency power off is 0) to the modem through atinout, the two dashes indicate that atinout reads from keyboard and writes to the screen

The modem comes back in life with the help of eg25-manager service, stop ofono, restart eg25-manager, start ofono, then power on and online with ofonoctl and enter the PIN

sudo systemctl stop ofono
sudo systemctl restart eg25-manager
sudo systemctl start ofono
ofonoctl poweron
ofonoctl online
qdbus --system org.ofono /quectelqmi_0 org.ofono.SimManager.EnterPin pin your_pin

the problem for now is that the plasmaphonedialer loses contact and you can not dial with Plasma

Plasma is based on the Telepathy framework and you can explore all these with qdbus where I believe there will be a method to attach the modem to the dialer again