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

[Simon Fels]

On 06.02.2017 15:48, Simon Fels wrote:
> 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.

I've just checked this and all pppd things are still in core. See
https://paste.ubuntu.com/23941360/

regards,
Simon