Connman stability degraded upgrading new versions

Connman stability degraded upgrading new versions

[Jupiter]

Hi Daniel,

When I used connman v1.35, it was very stable, it could switch to 4G
LTE automatically and reliably when the WiFi was not available.

After upgrading to version 1.37, that network automatic switch is
gone, I have to restart connman to make it work.

After trying to upgrade to version 1.39 in the Hardknott branch, I
cannot not even get WiFi and 4G LTE work, the WiFi network was
assigned with a fake IP address 10.x.x.x, it could not get the 4G LTE
interface. I have to abandon the upgrading. I was told that connman
1.39 did not work well with Hardknott libraries, I have no idea who is
managing the connman release on OE Yocto build.

What has been changed in connman new versions? I must miss something,
I was told that connman uses WPA supplicant for WiFi, I have used WPA
supplicant v2.6 for the connman v1.37, could it be WPA_supplicant
problem, or Yocto build problem or connman problem? My apology, I
don't have good debug skills to debug it, but if you could instruct me
debug technique I'll provide more testing and debug information.

Thank you.

Kind regards,

- jupiter

Re: Connman stability degraded upgrading new versions

[Daniel Wagner]

Hi Jupiter

On Tue, Sep 14, 2021 at 04:58:15PM +1000, Jupiter wrote:
> When I used connman v1.35, it was very stable, it could switch to 4G
> LTE automatically and reliably when the WiFi was not available.
> 
> After upgrading to version 1.37, that network automatic switch is
> gone, I have to restart connman to make it work.

Right, did anything else change in your setup? 1.37 is pretty outdated,
it was released early in 2019.

> After trying to upgrade to version 1.39 in the Hardknott branch, I
> cannot not even get WiFi and 4G LTE work, the WiFi network was
> assigned with a fake IP address 10.x.x.x, it could not get the 4G LTE
> interface.

An 10.x.x.x is not something ConnMan would do. It only auto assigns link
local addresses if the DHCP does not work. This IP seems to be handed
out by a DHCP server.

> I have to abandon the upgrading. I was told that connman
> 1.39 did not work well with Hardknott libraries, I have no idea who is
> managing the connman release on OE Yocto build.

I don't know either. This is the first time I hear of it.

> What has been changed in connman new versions?

Between 1.35 and 1.37 there a lot of changes. I really urge you to
update the latest version of ConnMan. I don't have time to debug older
versions of ConnMan.

> I must miss something,
> I was told that connman uses WPA supplicant for WiFi, I have used WPA
> supplicant v2.6 for the connman v1.37, could it be WPA_supplicant
> problem, or Yocto build problem or connman problem?

wpa_supplicant might be a problem but as we had a lot of changes between
the two version I really don't know.

> My apology, I don't have good debug skills to debug it, but if you
> could instruct me debug technique I'll provide more testing and debug
> information.

I see two option what you could try to do:

- Try to bissect the offending commit. This is pretty simple to do but
  takes awhile.

- The first step is to enable the logs and try to match this with the
  source code. This is hard and takes a long time.

Hope this helps,
Daniel