the ppp interface (and general renaming/transitioning of interfaces)

[Simon Fels]

On 06.02.2017 14:36, Oliver Grawert wrote:
> hi,
> 
> on the core images we currently provide a ppp interface that used to be
> used for pppd access in 15.04 images and also gives access to
> /dev/tty[0-9].
> 
> with series 16 the pppd binary was dropped from the core snap and a
> pppd snap was added to the store which provides all the ppp
> functionality, but the interface persisted in the core snap. 

When was pppd dropped from the core snap? We have a dependency on it
from the modem-manager snap which is why we added the ppp interface. It
also does a few more things like ensuring that the right kernel modules
are loaded etc.

> i recently got a question from a customer about an interface providing
> access to /dev/tty0 for certain console messages ... 

That would be more the serial-port interface where we need a slot on the
gadget/core snap for.

> this made me wonder if we have any forward plans for renaming
> interfaces in cases like the above ...

Please don't do this. The modem-manager snap defines a plug with this
interface so we can't easily remove or rename it.

> i.e. it would make sense to rename the ppp interface to "console-
> access" or "tty-access" and drop the execution bits for the non-
> existing pppd binary from it... do we have any implementation plans,
> rules, policies etc for such use-cases yet ?

Actually we're in a broken state now. When the ppp interface was
implemented the idea was that ppp remains in the core snap. Long term I
agree that there are better ways to express portions of the ppp
interface (like via serial-port) but the interface itself needs to stay
as it triggers loading of the right kernel modules needed for ppp.

regards,
Simon